[schoen]

I remember seeing some Internet post a couple of decades ago where someone asserted that the goal of ATC was to prevent midair collisions and that U.S. ATC had met this goal perfectly, with no midair collisions between aircraft that were under the control of ATC at the time.

I think the claim was qualified in some way like "collision between civilian flights that were both flying an ATC-assigned clearance at the time". (So some kinds of flights and some kinds of airspace don't require ATC clearance, and if one of them were involved in a collision, it wouldn't be ATC's responsibility, in some sense.)

My question at the moment is: is this claim plausible if you qualify or restrict it enough? Do you have to tack on additional conditions?

Is there any useful sense in which this collision was a first for U.S. aviation history?

[mlac]

> "The Cirrus descended through 6400 feet about 3nm north of the threshold of runway 17R, but overshot the centerlines of both runways 17R and 17L"

It looks like the Cirrus wasn't flying to what the ATC cleared...