The Citation pilot saw the Southwest Boeing 737 and asked the tower what was going on. Now, the final investigative NTSB report illustrates what was happening in the air traffic control tower during those crucial moments. The local controller was distracted, the report said, talking to another air traffic control facility about the wrong altitude assigned to a different departing aircraft. A surface radar alarmed in the tower and warned the controllers about the near collision, but the planes were already dangerously close. The NTSB report concluded the controller’s “poor judgment in duty prioritization” caused the incident, and the supervisor’s focus on the printer contributed.