There are 2 different issues here : ATC and the pilot reactions : The A320 crew reaction for me was very good : it prevented a collision. You had to be in his seat to pass any form of comment , distance left, , speed he had at the time , etc.. Good job.
For the A330 ,well, more difficult : were there red bars crossed ? what was Pilots visibility from his angle , or which frequency was he on , and which frequency was the order to stop given, step on/crossed transmissions ? etc.. lots of unknown to be able to comment seriously .
Now the apparent ATC error : ( I say apparent because we did not see any R/T transcript and analysis yet) but the Chinese CAA reactions seem to indicate it was the case. But we all know an incident such as this one rarely has a single cause.
Reading the various things posted so far , I cannot help thinking of the following scenario :
From a Western ATC point of view it would seem there should have been at least 4 controllers on duty in the TWR : one for each runway in use , one for ground and one supervisor. But we know that due staff shortages or in periods of low traffic, this is often reduced , the frequencies are collapsed sometimes down to a single controller , sometimes with the supervisor manning a control position , or coaching a trainee.
An indication as to how many controllers were on duty and who was doing what would help here.
Since the recent press release of the CAA indicating that a large number of management officials were disciplined as well , that would indicate to me that there might be a systemic management failure, where management allowed certain operations or position manning to take place that were not part of the procedures.
Just saying , having seen similar things many times before before . ( e.g Ueberlingen )
As to punishing everybody so harshly ( for life !!!) after such incident , this is totally unprofessional and absolutely contra productive for safety, as, knowing the consequences nobody there is going to report voluntary errors and incidents , and worse, nobody seeing an incident/error will report it knowing the consequences for his colleagues. We are back in the 1950's..
