I am watching season 2 episode 13 of Breaking Bad and in the episode it shows that:

an air traffic controller, distraught from his daughter's death, causes a mid-air collision, resulting in debris and human remains raining down onto the Whites' residence, as well as the rest of Albuquerque

It is at the very end of the episode and it looks like he has done nothing malicious just forgot to tell something. To me this sounds really surprising that a single human error can cause such damage.

As a programmer, I know that most of the scenes about computers depicted in the movies are complete nonsense. Is this a similar nonsense about aviation or is this really possible?