Good post millhouse21. I'm not interested where it happened, only WHY and HOW CAN IT BE AVOIDED in the future. American controllers may do things differently to us Europeans but I'm certain that SAFE & expeditious handling of traffic is their top priority. Europe or USA, procedures will have flaws and these will surface from time to time. We learn and we move on. My sympathy goes out to the two controllers involved. Just how close this may have been to a catastrophe will haunt them for years to come. They came on duty that day to do a good job in almost constant high pressure environment.