Comment by llamaimperative

I think the ATC is “exonerated” in the sense of it not being their fault, however that does not necessarily mean a fully staffed and more attentive ATC team wouldn’t have prevented the disaster.

Noticing aircraft flying off assigned course is exactly the type of thing that a resource constrained ATC would be guiltless in NOT noticing, but that a non-constrained ATC probably would notice.

Obviously if ATC were fully staffed and this happened, it wouldn’t be worth seriously looking into, but there’s a reason the intended staffing levels are what they are, which can basically be summed up as “cognitive burden.”