AA jet and Military helicopter collide over Potomac 8

Which "reports"? There is a NYT article which from what I can see has some questionable comments, but can't see an NTSB one who are the only people with the CVR.

Despite clear errors from the helicopter pilot and, for me, the ATC, the whole set up was at fault in allowing this very hazardous airspace conflict to happen in the first place. Someone, be it the military or the civilian traffic needed to have right of way and the other parties revolve around it to avoid flying into each other and killing 67 people.

Relying on a pilot to maintain such a low altitude with an error margin of 50 feet or less when hurtling through a dark night sky is madness.
All the other things like ADSB etc are just fluff. IMHO.

To avoid all this talking over each other why has anyone not developed a robust text system between ATC and pilots??

The aircraft had right of way because it was restricted in movement and performance.

And yes there is a system called ACARS but has to much latency for aerodrome. Plus also we use what we hear to other traffic for situational awareness.

Another issue with mil traffic is sometimes they only have UHF radios and the civilian traffic can't hear them as we only have VHF unless ATC have a rebroadcast station linking UHF to VHF but apparently they are highly expensive.

Alistair_Heaton said:

The aircraft had right of way because it was restricted in movement and performance.

And yes there is a system called ACARS but has to much latency for aerodrome. Plus also we use what we hear to other traffic for situational awareness.

Another issue with mil traffic is sometimes they only have UHF radios and the civilian traffic can't hear them as we only have VHF unless ATC have a rebroadcast station linking UHF to VHF but apparently they are highly expensive.

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You would have thought it did but clearly the actions of ATC and the pilot were rather less prescriptive. If the aircraft had right of way the helicopter pilot needed to be told to hold or slow down or turn sharp left but the vague can you see it and pass behind whilst giving them night VFR seconds after they requested it isn't right of way to me.

LittleInch said:

the helicopter pilot needed to be told to hold

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Hold where exactly? Short of the path of the wrong plane she was watching? How does the pilot be precise about their "hold" position when hurtling through a dark night sky?

Yes. Short of the crossing path of a domestic airliner with 65 people on board.

That's the whole point. ATC should never have allowed the helicopter pilot to be hurtling through a night sky on VFR on a crossing path with a civilian air line on a fixed decent into a runway.

The whole set up of route 4 was terrible and helicopter transit should never have been allowed when civilian aircrhuaft were using runway 33. And certainly not VFR at night.

From what we know ATC were getting warnings about a collision warning and did nothing positive to prevent it.

Sorry I got the jumble of letters wrong.

ACARs allows us to email various people and get weather.

CPDLC is the system for coms with ATC. And of course there are two different systems which don't talk to each other. But that's an international issue not domestic.

LittleInch said:

Yes. Short of the crossing path of a domestic airliner with 65 people on board.

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You mean actually doing like she was told to do, when told to pass behind the plane? Because she was directed to pass behind the plane, meaning she needed to wait for it to cross in front of her.

You really like posting in circles, circles, circles.

No I meant Hold as in slow down and either hover (helicopters can do that) or do some small circles in the sky, so yes circles, circles circles....

Telling / asking the pilot to cross behind a plane coming towards her at an angle and descending inside a fairly narrow corridor for the helicopter route at night was, IMHO, next to useless. I would dispute the use of the word "directed", but we can disagree on that.

Wouldn't there be a lot of wake turbulence behind the airliner? It seems that passing behind wouldn't be so ideal either.

I would be a bit bumpy alright and the "instruction" was really quite vague in my opinion.

As a note there seems to be an outbreak of pissing matches between controllers and pilots at US airports. Mostly reported in industry media.

I wonder if the FAA has been cracking the whip.

Alistair_Heaton said:

As a note there seems to be an outbreak of pissing matches between controllers and pilots at US airports. Mostly reported in industry media.

I wonder if the FAA has been cracking the whip.

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Any examples?