For any non-pilots or non-ATC reading this thread: 100's of times every day, commercial airliners are passing 1,000' directly above or below each other, flying in airways in opposite directions at a closing speed of 900 miles per hour. This is a perfectly normal regulated situation and is called RVSM (Reduced Vertical Separation Minimum).
As Mud Skipper has demonstrated, a perfectly normal event can be made to sound dangerous or uncontrolled to those who have no knowledge or experience in that field.
The event being discussed in this thread was the result of a minor mistake, which was corrected; but because there are many layers of safety built in to commercial flying nowadays, the result was a safe outcome which was not dangerous, and not newsworthy.
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