A pilot’s view on why helicopter did not avoid passenger jet in

In order to enable safe flight, airspace is split into categories ranging from very tightly controlled areas around airports to other zones – mostly rural – where rules are much more relaxed.

The most stringently controlled zones are Class A airspace, such as the area around the Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington.

Pilots must obtain clearance from Air Traffic Control (ATC) to enter and, except in an emergency situation, must follow ATC instructions – such as on heading, height or clearance to land – to the letter.

If reconstructions of the situation in Washington on Wednesday night and ATC instructions are correct, a passenger aircraft seems to have been given clearance to line up and land on runway 33 (the runway is laid out on heading 330 degrees, with the opposite direction being 150 degrees.)

Donald Trump took to his Truth Social network overnight and wrote: “The airplane was on a perfect and routine line of approach to the airport.

“The helicopter was going straight at the airplane for an extended period of time. It is a clear night, the lights on the plane were blazing, why didn’t the helicopter go up or down, or turn.”

In ordinary flight outside controlled airspace, when two aircraft are approaching each other the aircraft on the right-hand side has right of way.

This is why one wing has a red light and the other green – approaching aircraft have a visual cue to take avoiding action or not, depending on which colour of light they see.

Once given clearance to land by ATC, however, an aircraft does not have to alter course even if, as seems to be the case in this incident, another aircraft (the military Black Hawk helicopter) is closing in on its right-hand side.

The helicopter should therefore have given way to the passenger jet. The crew of the Black Hawk should also have sought permission from ATC to “cross the active”, meaning to fly over the active runway and an imaginary line extended from that runway out to the ATC zone limits.

This is another safety mechanism designed to keep aircraft landing, and other airspace users clear of each other. In the ATC transcripts released so far, no such permission seems to have been given.

Credit: Earthcam

LiveATC, a respected public source for ATC radio broadcasts, captured the final transmission from controllers to the US Army helicopter, which was using the call sign PAT25.

“PAT25, do you have a CRJ [the airliner] in sight? PAT25, pass behind the CRJ,” an air traffic controller said at 8:47pm on Wednesday, local time.

Such “pass-behind” manoeuvres are routinely carried out every day all over the world, although visual clearances tend to be given in daylight rather than at night.

Seconds after that ATC transmission, the collision occurred, with background noises on the recording suggesting other personnel in the control tower saw the fireball as it happened.

Credit: X/@rawsalerts

The transmission suggests the helicopter’s pilots had been instructed to visually identify the CRJ airliner and ensure they would fly behind it while crossing the approach track to runway 33.

Normally a pilot would be expected to acknowledge the ATC instruction by saying “traffic in sight” or “traffic not in sight”.

That reply never came.

Dominic Nicholls served for 23 years in the British Army with operational deployments in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Balkans and Northern Ireland. Originally a cavalry officer in The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards, he later transferred to the Army Air Corps where he flew Gazelle helicopters.

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