> The Navy considered the incident a one-in-a-million fluke and was certain it would never happen again. Attridge was less convinced, however. “At the speeds we’re flying today,” he later said, “it could be duplicated any time.”

I think the idea here is that the planes and pilots are perfectly capable of hitting themselves at any time. Or in other words, this type of accident doesn't require the presence of any random one-in-a-million conditions. So, the low event frequency that is actually observed should be attributed to the fact that they intentionally avoid doing the dangerous action.

Makes sense, thanks