Climbing or descending into conflict still a problem in 2013 ? Classic in a safety system so predominantly reliant on exact vertical separation, what ?
It seems the best post mortem timelapse pictures of any growing collision risk in controlled airspace are ATC radar. Radar control is also surely the best ante mortem antedote to this kind of ill - pity that the control AND monitoring gets degraded when there is some pressure applied to change a plan (in this case a pilot's request to climb).
As I read it, the report indicates the onset of this conflict was brought about by a pilot request to climb i.e. a request to the controller to change the controller's current plan for the safe flight of that pilot's aircraft. The report doesn't actually say this was the cause because as an operational event it was seen as routine. As always, it is what happened next which is in our faces.
Ultimately, the plan was changed as requested but clearly on clearance to climb it was being changed to a more risky one which had created ATC workload at the time to accommodate, and then was quickly followed by more ATC workload / monitoring / confusion / concern, then seemingly missed or misinterpreted safety communications, then pilot workload and probable confusion.
The official post mortem risk classifications applied are ICAO C or ERC 102. Take your pick, but essentially a routine request to
(risk a) climb was mismanaged all the way into the tabloids today.
There's no question there are pants-down enough reasons for it to be reported in the tabloids. Seems to me the question is, as always, how better can classic pants down scenarios like this be avoided ?
The human condition/temptation to defend or blame individuals is of course not going to improve anything, but personally I don't buy that this was an everyday event to be noted in the database with a date and risk score.