Speaking as a passenger who frequents pprune occasionally, this thread scares me witless. Having flown into BOS on the 10th June (the next day) and being blissfully unaware of this near disaster, I actually made a comment to my wife how dangerous it seemed, that flights were landing almost simultaneously on similar tracks and that take-offs were ocurring from crossed runways. This purely from observing out of the window of the AA Eagle flight I was on after flying to JFK from Europe. I must say that I only ever have seen this happening in the US e.g. JFK, LAX and BOS but I always assumed there was some foolproof (Advanced) system to prevent collisions. Apparently not, and to hear that 2 controllers were communicating on different frequencies and apparently not to each other is to say the least, asking for a disater to happen.
In my view the whole of the American air travel industry is in deep crisis. It's not just the airlines who are close to "bankrupt". Some of these previous (Bashing) comments obviously have some truth behind them. US ATC is sometimes stretched beyond breaking point. I guess an accident will happen sooner or later, once again scaring the unusually timid American passengers away from flying. From the passenger angle, I can tell you that the rest of the entire sytem is the same, stretched beyond the limit. From the surly check-in staff (all US airlines) who seem badly trained (and badly paid?); to the baggage handling systems which are poorly designed and poorly maintained; to the terminal buildings that are filthy dirty and totally inadequate, to airport infrastructures and designs that quite honestly baffle me, to the passenger information systems which are totally useless; to the aircraft which are mostly past their use-by date, to the "iffy" service given by the flight attendants, to the security personnel that haven't a clue about human dignity. (Don't start me on that!) If it were an equal choice, I would stop travelling to the US altogether.
