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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][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 dashcam footage shows the helicopter seemingly moving too fast to have avoided the collision. [/quote]

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. [/quote]

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