Plane crash DCA?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I landed at this forum after Googling my question. I apologize if this is not an acceptable means for joining in:

From the helo pilot’s point of view, if you are traveling in a direction nearly head-on with an approaching plane whose path is slowly curving to the plane’s left towards an assigned runway, isn’t a request to "pass behind the plane" dangerously ambiguous relative to whether turning left or right is a safe maneuver? If at the time of the “pass request” the approaching plane is in-sight but is headed slight left of the current path of the helo, then the helo pilot steers his craft to his right. But within a few seconds, the approaching plane’s left-curve path has crossed the old projected path of the helo and is now to the right of the helo’s path, and the helo has tried to avoid the plane’s near head-on path by choosing the wrong path to “pass behind”.

This is a great point. I do feel like ATC lacked urgency and clear direction, given the couple recordings I’ve read.

From what I have read, the tower usually reduces by one ATC at 9:30pm and then a reamining ATC manages both helicopters and planes but on this night, the other ATC left an hour early - at 8:30. It seems maybe the crash happened during this shift turnover when the ATC was still doing his job and taking over for the ATC leaving early that night.

But ATC did communicate with the helicopter a couple times. But it gave the vague direction to “go behind” the plane. But given they were flying straight on, saying go behind assumes the helicopter knew the plane was about to make a hard turn to the runway. That seems obvious- but when given directions to flying planes it seems like protocol would be to use specific direction, not behind. The helicopter and the plane aren’t on the same frequency and couldn’t communicate.

There’s a lot of trust with pilots, each other and ATC.
When they say they see it and further request “visual separation” they are taking responsibility.

3+ terrible mistakes happened here in the helicopter part.

It is terrible that the jet didn’t look down and right, see the dark black hawk and abort landing/pull up.

Terrible that ATC didn’t explicitly order the help to drop altitude and bank left immediately.

And super terrible that the help didn’t understand where a RJ landing on 33 would be coming in from.

The regional jet pilit's line of sight over the nose and underneath is basically non existent

In some of the near miss examples, it seems the planes had alerts / alarms telling them another plane was too close and they chose to manouever away. I wonder what we will hear on the black box for both.

Do we know the helicopter made a sudden change in movement near the end? I thought they were just flying straight into the plane.

Yes if you watch the YouTube expert someone linked up thread, helo made sudden changes at last second. It was flying at 200 feet before but then suddenly rose to 350-400. It also turned sharply right.

[Anonymous]

Trump spent two minutes on plane crash and condolences and 38 minutes blaming Obama and Biden!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Came out last night that the sidestep to 33 was because ATC had put multiple jets on final for 1 too close. The whole event started long before, with at least one plane refusing to switch to 33. Still primarily the helicopter fault but having 1 tower ATC was a large contributing factor. Many of us in the aviation community have felt this is the exact scenario the multiple near collisions over the last 24 months would bring.

Runway 33 is perfect for regional jets.

200 seaters can’t use it.

Not a big deal. Usually.

That's fine but that wasn't the original flight plan - the tower ATC had multiple landings spaced too closely and needed one of them to move from the pattern (landing on 1) to landing on 33. This is normal, but it shouldn't be normal - there should be enough ATC capacity so that the tower doesn't get behind the queue. Like everything else by itself it's fine, but it's another hole in the swiss cheese that led to this disaster. Just like having see and avoid. Just like night vision goggles. Just like conflicting traffic patterns. None of these on their own was the only cause. They all had to line up together and they did tonight. The public has no idea how close things have been.

I strongly disagree with the "all had to line up together" argument. There is one issue that is one major violation of protocol that trumps everything: the altitude of the helicopter.

You can discuss that there should be a better procedure in place and many would agree with you. But here is one that was in place and was violated. Everything else is a contributing factor.

Disobeying the command from ATC to wait until the plane passed in front of them was probably the bigger failure.

All complex systems operate in a partially failed state due to redundancies that tolerate the existing failures. Eventually those existing failures will line up, resulting in a catastrophic failure. There's no single point of failure.

https://how.complexsystems.fail/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I landed at this forum after Googling my question. I apologize if this is not an acceptable means for joining in:

From the helo pilot’s point of view, if you are traveling in a direction nearly head-on with an approaching plane whose path is slowly curving to the plane’s left towards an assigned runway, isn’t a request to "pass behind the plane" dangerously ambiguous relative to whether turning left or right is a safe maneuver? If at the time of the “pass request” the approaching plane is in-sight but is headed slight left of the current path of the helo, then the helo pilot steers his craft to his right. But within a few seconds, the approaching plane’s left-curve path has crossed the old projected path of the helo and is now to the right of the helo’s path, and the helo has tried to avoid the plane’s near head-on path by choosing the wrong path to “pass behind”.

This is a great point. I do feel like ATC lacked urgency and clear direction, given the couple recordings I’ve read.

From what I have read, the tower usually reduces by one ATC at 9:30pm and then a reamining ATC manages both helicopters and planes but on this night, the other ATC left an hour early - at 8:30. It seems maybe the crash happened during this shift turnover when the ATC was still doing his job and taking over for the ATC leaving early that night.

But ATC did communicate with the helicopter a couple times. But it gave the vague direction to “go behind” the plane. But given they were flying straight on, saying go behind assumes the helicopter knew the plane was about to make a hard turn to the runway. That seems obvious- but when given directions to flying planes it seems like protocol would be to use specific direction, not behind. The helicopter and the plane aren’t on the same frequency and couldn’t communicate.

There’s a lot of trust with pilots, each other and ATC.
When they say they see it and further request “visual separation” they are taking responsibility.

3+ terrible mistakes happened here in the helicopter part.

It is terrible that the jet didn’t look down and right, see the dark black hawk and abort landing/pull up.

Terrible that ATC didn’t explicitly order the help to drop altitude and bank left immediately.

And super terrible that the help didn’t understand where a RJ landing on 33 would be coming in from.

The regional jet pilit's line of sight over the nose and underneath is basically non existent

In some of the near miss examples, it seems the planes had alerts / alarms telling them another plane was too close and they chose to manouever away. I wonder what we will hear on the black box for both.

Do we know the helicopter made a sudden change in movement near the end? I thought they were just flying straight into the plane.

Both aircraft would have had alerts for conflicts but the audio is disabled and conflicts for arriving aircraft are common. The tower had a Collision Avoidance alert that blared for 16 seconds before impact. Was the tower controller distracted doing 2 separate jobs? Likely.

He didn't sound distracted. He checked on the helicopter multiple times. A helicopter can stop in midair, change direction very quickly. The ATC radioed the helicopter to confirm visual separation as the aircraft got closer together and got confirmation. And then as they both banked west, the ATC *again* radioed the helicopter and this time gave it a direction to go behind the plane (something the ATC should actually not be required to do at that point because the helicopter has twice told the tower that they are taking responsibility for maintaining distance).

I get that the ATC was doing two jobs and maybe if there were two ATC in that moment with one focused on helicopters, this would not have happened. However, maybe it still would have. The ATC didn't ignore the helicopter -- he was in constant communication and alerting the helicopter specifically to the plane in question. The helicopter also has radar on board. You'd think once they requested visual separation, someone on the helicopter would have checked radar at least once and immediately seen that the plane in question was significantly closer than they seemed to think (perhaps because the visual they were identifying was actually the larger jet behind the one question).

If there had been an ATC dedicated to helicopters that night, maybe that ATC would have recognized that the helicopter had misunderstood and provided greater detail about where the plane was or asked the helicopter to identify on radar or something. In other words, an ATC dedicated to the helicopter might have been able to correct the helicopter's error. But ATC are not babysitters (even though that's how they are treated often). No ATC should have to do anymore than this one did in this situation, if the pilots in question are doing their jobs.

The irony here is that if there were another ATC on duty that night, or even if this ATC had been able to better alert the helicopter to their error and prevent the crash, no one would ever know. The ATC would have saved 67 lives and no one would know.

Think about how many times ATC at National have done exactly that, possibly for flights you've been on, and you were none the wiser.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I landed at this forum after Googling my question. I apologize if this is not an acceptable means for joining in:

From the helo pilot’s point of view, if you are traveling in a direction nearly head-on with an approaching plane whose path is slowly curving to the plane’s left towards an assigned runway, isn’t a request to "pass behind the plane" dangerously ambiguous relative to whether turning left or right is a safe maneuver? If at the time of the “pass request” the approaching plane is in-sight but is headed slight left of the current path of the helo, then the helo pilot steers his craft to his right. But within a few seconds, the approaching plane’s left-curve path has crossed the old projected path of the helo and is now to the right of the helo’s path, and the helo has tried to avoid the plane’s near head-on path by choosing the wrong path to “pass behind”.

This is a great point. I do feel like ATC lacked urgency and clear direction, given the couple recordings I’ve read.

From what I have read, the tower usually reduces by one ATC at 9:30pm and then a reamining ATC manages both helicopters and planes but on this night, the other ATC left an hour early - at 8:30. It seems maybe the crash happened during this shift turnover when the ATC was still doing his job and taking over for the ATC leaving early that night.

But ATC did communicate with the helicopter a couple times. But it gave the vague direction to “go behind” the plane. But given they were flying straight on, saying go behind assumes the helicopter knew the plane was about to make a hard turn to the runway. That seems obvious- but when given directions to flying planes it seems like protocol would be to use specific direction, not behind. The helicopter and the plane aren’t on the same frequency and couldn’t communicate.

There’s a lot of trust with pilots, each other and ATC.
When they say they see it and further request “visual separation” they are taking responsibility.

3+ terrible mistakes happened here in the helicopter part.

It is terrible that the jet didn’t look down and right, see the dark black hawk and abort landing/pull up.

Terrible that ATC didn’t explicitly order the help to drop altitude and bank left immediately.

And super terrible that the help didn’t understand where a RJ landing on 33 would be coming in from.

The dashcam footage shows the helicopter seemingly moving too fast to have avoided the collision.

What dash cam?

The Kennedy rooftop one (or wherever it’s from) has the angle of the RJ flying right at it so can’t gauge its speeds, and the helicopter coming out from behind Haines point going left to right. So of course it looks “faster” than something coming straight at you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Trump forced the faa director to quit.

This airport and ATC standards have been a problem for a long time. It didn’t suddenly fall apart Jan 20. The hiring freeze has nothing to do with current ATC

Trump’s acute harassment of federal workers this week absolutely could have contributed to reducing performance by the military crew and FAA. It’s literally what he planned to do - “torture” federal employees. People undergoing torture don’t perform at their peak.

+1 during the last 10 days Trump has intentionally created chaos across the government and told workers they are an embarrassment and he wants to fire them. Of course, people who support Trump insist his actions are simply cutting waste because they DGAF about the numerous things that the government does that keeps society running. One of those things is preventing aircraft from colliding with one another.

But let's say the insanity of the last 10 days has nothing to do with this particular crash. How can people be okay with the way Trump treats the very people who work day and night to keep people healthy and safe?

+100. Every single air traffic controller at National who got up and went to work today is a hero. The ATCs on duty Weds night are likely out on medical leave because of how horrific the crash was for them emotionally. They may never work again as ATC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Trump spent two minutes on plane crash and condolences and 38 minutes blaming Obama and Biden!

The only question left is if Trump is a sociopath or a psychopath. I say sociopath as I don't think he is calculating enough to be a psychopath but I could be wrong.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Trump forced the faa director to quit.

This airport and ATC standards have been a problem for a long time. It didn’t suddenly fall apart Jan 20. The hiring freeze has nothing to do with current ATC

Trump’s acute harassment of federal workers this week absolutely could have contributed to reducing performance by the military crew and FAA. It’s literally what he planned to do - “torture” federal employees. People undergoing torture don’t perform at their peak.

So, criticism of federal employees is torture?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I landed at this forum after Googling my question. I apologize if this is not an acceptable means for joining in:

From the helo pilot’s point of view, if you are traveling in a direction nearly head-on with an approaching plane whose path is slowly curving to the plane’s left towards an assigned runway, isn’t a request to "pass behind the plane" dangerously ambiguous relative to whether turning left or right is a safe maneuver? If at the time of the “pass request” the approaching plane is in-sight but is headed slight left of the current path of the helo, then the helo pilot steers his craft to his right. But within a few seconds, the approaching plane’s left-curve path has crossed the old projected path of the helo and is now to the right of the helo’s path, and the helo has tried to avoid the plane’s near head-on path by choosing the wrong path to “pass behind”.

This is a great point. I do feel like ATC lacked urgency and clear direction, given the couple recordings I’ve read.

From what I have read, the tower usually reduces by one ATC at 9:30pm and then a reamining ATC manages both helicopters and planes but on this night, the other ATC left an hour early - at 8:30. It seems maybe the crash happened during this shift turnover when the ATC was still doing his job and taking over for the ATC leaving early that night.

But ATC did communicate with the helicopter a couple times. But it gave the vague direction to “go behind” the plane. But given they were flying straight on, saying go behind assumes the helicopter knew the plane was about to make a hard turn to the runway. That seems obvious- but when given directions to flying planes it seems like protocol would be to use specific direction, not behind. The helicopter and the plane aren’t on the same frequency and couldn’t communicate.

There’s a lot of trust with pilots, each other and ATC.
When they say they see it and further request “visual separation” they are taking responsibility.

3+ terrible mistakes happened here in the helicopter part.

It is terrible that the jet didn’t look down and right, see the dark black hawk and abort landing/pull up.

Terrible that ATC didn’t explicitly order the help to drop altitude and bank left immediately.

And super terrible that the help didn’t understand where a RJ landing on 33 would be coming in from.

The dashcam footage shows the helicopter seemingly moving too fast to have avoided the collision.

Someone up thread said around 30+ minutes had elapsed between ATC communicating with helicopter for first time about the plane and if they had sight and when collision happened. That’s seems to be plenty of time to gain bearings and avoid the plane.

Was that a typo though? Thirty minutes is a long distance in aviation terms.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Trump forced the faa director to quit.

This airport and ATC standards have been a problem for a long time. It didn’t suddenly fall apart Jan 20. The hiring freeze has nothing to do with current ATC

Trump’s acute harassment of federal workers this week absolutely could have contributed to reducing performance by the military crew and FAA. It’s literally what he planned to do - “torture” federal employees. People undergoing torture don’t perform at their peak.

So, criticism of federal employees is torture?

You call what Trump has been doing "criticism"? Gtfooh. He hasn't been criticizing federal workers. That would require him to actually say what they have been doing to deserve to be fired. He has been abusing them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I landed at this forum after Googling my question. I apologize if this is not an acceptable means for joining in:

From the helo pilot’s point of view, if you are traveling in a direction nearly head-on with an approaching plane whose path is slowly curving to the plane’s left towards an assigned runway, isn’t a request to "pass behind the plane" dangerously ambiguous relative to whether turning left or right is a safe maneuver? If at the time of the “pass request” the approaching plane is in-sight but is headed slight left of the current path of the helo, then the helo pilot steers his craft to his right. But within a few seconds, the approaching plane’s left-curve path has crossed the old projected path of the helo and is now to the right of the helo’s path, and the helo has tried to avoid the plane’s near head-on path by choosing the wrong path to “pass behind”.

This is a great point. I do feel like ATC lacked urgency and clear direction, given the couple recordings I’ve read.

From what I have read, the tower usually reduces by one ATC at 9:30pm and then a reamining ATC manages both helicopters and planes but on this night, the other ATC left an hour early - at 8:30. It seems maybe the crash happened during this shift turnover when the ATC was still doing his job and taking over for the ATC leaving early that night.

But ATC did communicate with the helicopter a couple times. But it gave the vague direction to “go behind” the plane. But given they were flying straight on, saying go behind assumes the helicopter knew the plane was about to make a hard turn to the runway. That seems obvious- but when given directions to flying planes it seems like protocol would be to use specific direction, not behind. The helicopter and the plane aren’t on the same frequency and couldn’t communicate.

There’s a lot of trust with pilots, each other and ATC.
When they say they see it and further request “visual separation” they are taking responsibility.

3+ terrible mistakes happened here in the helicopter part.

It is terrible that the jet didn’t look down and right, see the dark black hawk and abort landing/pull up.

Terrible that ATC didn’t explicitly order the help to drop altitude and bank left immediately.

And super terrible that the help didn’t understand where a RJ landing on 33 would be coming in from.

The regional jet pilit's line of sight over the nose and underneath is basically non existent

What is we built the cockpit out of glass? /s

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Came out last night that the sidestep to 33 was because ATC had put multiple jets on final for 1 too close. The whole event started long before, with at least one plane refusing to switch to 33. Still primarily the helicopter fault but having 1 tower ATC was a large contributing factor. Many of us in the aviation community have felt this is the exact scenario the multiple near collisions over the last 24 months would bring.

Runway 33 is perfect for regional jets.

200 seaters can’t use it.

Not a big deal. Usually.

That's fine but that wasn't the original flight plan - the tower ATC had multiple landings spaced too closely and needed one of them to move from the pattern (landing on 1) to landing on 33. This is normal, but it shouldn't be normal - there should be enough ATC capacity so that the tower doesn't get behind the queue. Like everything else by itself it's fine, but it's another hole in the swiss cheese that led to this disaster. Just like having see and avoid. Just like night vision goggles. Just like conflicting traffic patterns. None of these on their own was the only cause. They all had to line up together and they did tonight. The public has no idea how close things have been.

I strongly disagree with the "all had to line up together" argument. There is one issue that is one major violation of protocol that trumps everything: the altitude of the helicopter.

You can discuss that there should be a better procedure in place and many would agree with you. But here is one that was in place and was violated. Everything else is a contributing factor.

Disobeying the command from ATC to wait until the plane passed in front of them was probably the bigger failure.

Ok. I stand corrected. Two major violations on the part of military helicopter.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I landed at this forum after Googling my question. I apologize if this is not an acceptable means for joining in:

From the helo pilot’s point of view, if you are traveling in a direction nearly head-on with an approaching plane whose path is slowly curving to the plane’s left towards an assigned runway, isn’t a request to "pass behind the plane" dangerously ambiguous relative to whether turning left or right is a safe maneuver? If at the time of the “pass request” the approaching plane is in-sight but is headed slight left of the current path of the helo, then the helo pilot steers his craft to his right. But within a few seconds, the approaching plane’s left-curve path has crossed the old projected path of the helo and is now to the right of the helo’s path, and the helo has tried to avoid the plane’s near head-on path by choosing the wrong path to “pass behind”.

This is a great point. I do feel like ATC lacked urgency and clear direction, given the couple recordings I’ve read.

From what I have read, the tower usually reduces by one ATC at 9:30pm and then a reamining ATC manages both helicopters and planes but on this night, the other ATC left an hour early - at 8:30. It seems maybe the crash happened during this shift turnover when the ATC was still doing his job and taking over for the ATC leaving early that night.

But ATC did communicate with the helicopter a couple times. But it gave the vague direction to “go behind” the plane. But given they were flying straight on, saying go behind assumes the helicopter knew the plane was about to make a hard turn to the runway. That seems obvious- but when given directions to flying planes it seems like protocol would be to use specific direction, not behind. The helicopter and the plane aren’t on the same frequency and couldn’t communicate.

There’s a lot of trust with pilots, each other and ATC.
When they say they see it and further request “visual separation” they are taking responsibility.

3+ terrible mistakes happened here in the helicopter part.

It is terrible that the jet didn’t look down and right, see the dark black hawk and abort landing/pull up.

Terrible that ATC didn’t explicitly order the help to drop altitude and bank left immediately.

And super terrible that the help didn’t understand where a RJ landing on 33 would be coming in from.

The regional jet pilit's line of sight over the nose and underneath is basically non existent

In some of the near miss examples, it seems the planes had alerts / alarms telling them another plane was too close and they chose to manouever away. I wonder what we will hear on the black box for both.

Do we know the helicopter made a sudden change in movement near the end? I thought they were just flying straight into the plane.

Both aircraft would have had alerts for conflicts but the audio is disabled and conflicts for arriving aircraft are common. The tower had a Collision Avoidance alert that blared for 16 seconds before impact. Was the tower controller distracted doing 2 separate jobs? Likely.

He didn't sound distracted. He checked on the helicopter multiple times. A helicopter can stop in midair, change direction very quickly. The ATC radioed the helicopter to confirm visual separation as the aircraft got closer together and got confirmation. And then as they both banked west, the ATC *again* radioed the helicopter and this time gave it a direction to go behind the plane (something the ATC should actually not be required to do at that point because the helicopter has twice told the tower that they are taking responsibility for maintaining distance).

I get that the ATC was doing two jobs and maybe if there were two ATC in that moment with one focused on helicopters, this would not have happened. However, maybe it still would have. The ATC didn't ignore the helicopter -- he was in constant communication and alerting the helicopter specifically to the plane in question. The helicopter also has radar on board. You'd think once they requested visual separation, someone on the helicopter would have checked radar at least once and immediately seen that the plane in question was significantly closer than they seemed to think (perhaps because the visual they were identifying was actually the larger jet behind the one question).

If there had been an ATC dedicated to helicopters that night, maybe that ATC would have recognized that the helicopter had misunderstood and provided greater detail about where the plane was or asked the helicopter to identify on radar or something. In other words, an ATC dedicated to the helicopter might have been able to correct the helicopter's error. But ATC are not babysitters (even though that's how they are treated often). No ATC should have to do anymore than this one did in this situation, if the pilots in question are doing their jobs.

The irony here is that if there were another ATC on duty that night, or even if this ATC had been able to better alert the helicopter to their error and prevent the crash, no one would ever know. The ATC would have saved 67 lives and no one would know.

Think about how many times ATC at National have done exactly that, possibly for flights you've been on, and you were none the wiser.

Actually we do know because LiveATC captures these situationa All.The.Time. Controllers are constantly deconflicting traffic (sometimes because they conflict them accidentally). There are some great youtube channels showing this - VasAviation is probably the best. Last year a southwest plane came close to hitting the tower at LaGuardia. At DCA just a few months ago ATC put 2 jets on a collision course (one landing while other lined up) and ATC deconflicted. In San Diego a southwest jet almost landed atop a private jet. The takeoff plate from Teterboro in NJ (the private jet airport) is in the direct path of the approach plate for Newark, and there have been several near collisions.

Aviation is one of the few industries where we demand a 0% failure rate. And we get it most of the time. But, ATC is human, pilots are human, the systems in place fail. It's been decades since the last US air disaster, an amazing run that was always going to come to an end. But to have seen this specific issue actually happen, this is something if you speak to anyone in the aviation business, we all knew was going to happen in some way shape or form.

[Anonymous]

Trump isn’t to blame, Biden isn’t to blame. Neither is ATC. They followed protocol, even if short staffed, they still did exactly what they should have done. I don’t see how the finger can be pointed anywhere other than directly at the helicopter at this point.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I landed at this forum after Googling my question. I apologize if this is not an acceptable means for joining in:

From the helo pilot’s point of view, if you are traveling in a direction nearly head-on with an approaching plane whose path is slowly curving to the plane’s left towards an assigned runway, isn’t a request to "pass behind the plane" dangerously ambiguous relative to whether turning left or right is a safe maneuver? If at the time of the “pass request” the approaching plane is in-sight but is headed slight left of the current path of the helo, then the helo pilot steers his craft to his right. But within a few seconds, the approaching plane’s left-curve path has crossed the old projected path of the helo and is now to the right of the helo’s path, and the helo has tried to avoid the plane’s near head-on path by choosing the wrong path to “pass behind”.

I cannot follow this at all.

Both planes are flying head on. ATC says “go behind” but the direction the helicopter thought would be behind the plane turns out wasn’t bc the plane turned opposite of what helicopter was anticipated. This make a lot of sense.

You are ignoring the context of the situation. The CJR was landing. That would have been obvious to the helo, given that's the only thing a plane is going to be doing flying at that altitude in that location. The helo's flight path was taking them through the approach to DCA.

"Going behind" obviously means waiting until the CJR crosses your flight path before proceeding. They obviously didn't do that.

There's no reasonable justification for the helo's actions that doesn't involve gross negligence on their part. If, as some claimed, they saw the lights from second airplane (4 miles away), then they ignored the command from ATC, thinking that they could cut in front of the plane.

This is actually a great point. If helo truly had sights on the wrong plane, the direction from ATC to go behind the plane wouldn't make any sense because that plane was much farther south and they didnt follow that order anyways because they didn't slow down.