[Baronman]

I haven't seen/heard all the details, but don't assume the pilots should have known better. I looked up the crew and it was a fairly senior crew, the Captain having 8 years with the company and the FO about 2, and it was a EWR crew.

On a busy night coming into EWR you may talk to three or more different approach controllers prior to getting to tower, it's not always the same frequencies. Additionally by the time you get to the final approach controller to the time you're on the localizer, it can be pretty quick. Throw in a wrong frequency change, very busy frequencies, testy controllers and before you know it you may not be where you're supposed to be.

I doubt (I KNOW) that it was not an error with mixing up the EWR tower frequency. There is only 1 freq (118.3) and if you've been based there for any amount of time, there's no way you're forgetting it that easily, or mixing it up with TEB tower.

Probably a bad hand off from one controller to the next and it took the flight crew a minute or two in really congested airspace to get back in the game. In the meantime separation was lost but really this whole thing was a non-event.