Narrative:

While working a extremely busy sector; 2 airplanes converged. I was assigned D25 while the sector was yellow and was going to stay yellow or red for at least the next hour. There was a solid line of moderate to extreme precipitation from west of srq northeast. After working approximately 15 minutes we were assigned a tracker. The tracker and the r-side worked the traffic as I constantly busy with coordination from other sectors and dealing with the uret issues. Uret always has redundant blue routes or blue routes because of a qualifier problem. I did my best to take care of those as time allowed. We were supposed to have 15 miles in trail for aircraft going to palm beach. We received several airplanes near molle intersection who wanted to deviate or stay high for the weather. Aircraft were asking to stay high to stay above the weather and to then descend on the other side. We had a C560 and a CL60. They were both at FL350 deviating [or] wanting to stay high. As I was busy doing coordination; I missed most of what happened. What I saw was that the CL60 caught the C560 who was slower. When it was recognized that we had an overtake situation; we tried to descend the C560 but it was too late. The sector had way too many airplanes. We never got the 15 mit we should have gotten from zcj. We were solid red for almost the entire time I was plugged in about 45 minutes. Not only was there volume to pbi but also volume to mia and fll. These other aircraft also were deviating and wanting to stay high for the weather. The weather was affecting all 3 arrival streams. Also add in westbound traffic from mia/fll and adjacent sector traffic wanting to deviate into our airspace. When 15 mit is applied it should be applied to all aircraft on the arrival not just the ones going to a specific airport. The CL60 was a bct lander but should be considered for in trail as he was flying the same arrival and the C560. Flow control needs to factor that in. Also; flow did a horrible job as the number for the sector is 17 and we had at least 30 aircraft the entire time. We need better procedures when things are bad and not just make up poor procedures when it goes to hell. Flow needs to do a better job of spacing things out. Flm's needed to make decisions and stand by them. No one wants to make the call to be the bad guy and we suffer at the sector. Unfortunately this time safety was compromised as a result of flm and tmc in-actions!

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: ZMA Controller experienced a loss of separation event during a very busy and complex traffic period citing Traffic Management shortfalls as contributory.

Narrative: While working a extremely busy sector; 2 airplanes converged. I was assigned D25 while the sector was yellow and was going to stay yellow or red for at least the next hour. There was a solid line of moderate to extreme precipitation from west of SRQ northeast. After working approximately 15 minutes we were assigned a tracker. The tracker and the R-Side worked the traffic as I constantly busy with coordination from other sectors and dealing with the URET issues. URET always has redundant blue routes or blue routes because of a qualifier problem. I did my best to take care of those as time allowed. We were supposed to have 15 miles in trail for aircraft going to Palm Beach. We received several airplanes near MOLLE Intersection who wanted to deviate or stay high for the weather. Aircraft were asking to stay high to stay above the weather and to then descend on the other side. We had a C560 and a CL60. They were both at FL350 deviating [or] wanting to stay high. As I was busy doing coordination; I missed most of what happened. What I saw was that the CL60 caught the C560 who was slower. When it was recognized that we had an overtake situation; we tried to descend the C560 but it was too late. The sector had way too many airplanes. We never got the 15 MIT we should have gotten from ZCJ. We were solid red for almost the entire time I was plugged in about 45 minutes. Not only was there volume to PBI but also volume to MIA and FLL. These other aircraft also were deviating and wanting to stay high for the weather. The weather was affecting all 3 arrival streams. Also add in westbound traffic from MIA/FLL and adjacent sector traffic wanting to deviate into our airspace. When 15 MIT is applied it should be applied to all aircraft on the arrival not just the ones going to a specific airport. The CL60 was a BCT lander but should be considered for in trail as he was flying the same arrival and the C560. Flow control needs to factor that in. Also; flow did a horrible job as the number for the sector is 17 and we had at least 30 aircraft the entire time. We need better procedures when things are bad and not just make up poor procedures when it goes to hell. Flow needs to do a better job of spacing things out. FLM's needed to make decisions and stand by them. No one wants to make the call to be the bad guy and we suffer at the sector. Unfortunately this time safety was compromised as a result of FLM and TMC in-actions!

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of July 2013 and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.