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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][size=24] [/size][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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”.
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This is a great point.  I do feel like ATC lacked urgency and clear direction, given the couple recordings I’ve read. [/quote]

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. [/quote]

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.  [/quote]

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. [/quote]

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

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. [/quote]

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. [/quote]

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.[/quote]

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