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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]

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. [/quote]

I definitely have questions about those last second maneuvers by the helicopter. Assuming that the helicopter did not realize the plane was right on top of them and were actually tracking the plane further south headed for runway 1 (still a screwup on their part because I believe the ATC had specifically said the plan was headed to runway 33 and in any case they should have seen it on radar), it is still confusing why they climbed and turned at that specific moment in time.

Both choices (the altitude change and the turn) are technically violations of the prescribed route the helicopter was on, which directs helicopters to stick as close as they can to the eastern shore of the Potomac and to stay at or below 200ft until they get to the Woodrow Wilson bridge. Both directives exist explicitly to keep helicopters out of National's air traffic. But helicopters through that corridor like to violate both directives. They prefer to fly down the middle of the river because it's easier and keeps them away from trees, power lines, and other low level obstructions (it also looks cool when you are in a helicopter and have the river centered). And the also like to climb over 200ft in that area, though I don't actually know why this is -- perhaps just difficult to maintain the lower altitude and they get sloppy? I actually don't know, but they do it all the time.

But the fact that this helicopter did both things at the same time right as it was passing one of National's runways is so baffling to me. Note that if there had been a plane landing on runway 1 at that moment, these choices still make no sense and could have potentially caused a collision. At that specific point in space, it is particularly important for the helicopter to be lower and further east. So why on earth choose that moment to lift and turn west?

Perhaps we'll never know but it's so frustrating to see it happen and just not understand why it's happening. Even if they had misunderstood where the plane was. The maneuvers still baffle me. Maybe there was some kind of obstacle, like a flock of birds or a drone? I don't know.[/quote]

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