Posts about: "Route 4" [Posts: 113 Page: 3 of 6]¶

With proper ATC staffing would it be a practicle proceedure for helicopter traffic travelling Southbound on route 1 to be given an expected further clearance time for Hains Point. This would allow the helicopter to adjust its speed or hold at Hains until traffic on approach to 33 is clear before the helicopter is then given clearance to enter route 4 and proceed Southbound crossing the approach to 33?

Hence the issue requiring metering the helicopters on the numbered Routes.

I don't suggest a hard 1.5NM, but anywhere standard fixed wing ops cannot assure 500' vertical separation, Rotary wing traffic must be gated and controlled.

If rotary wing mission dictates, then fixed wing traffic will have to wait/go missed/discontinue approach. Visual Sep, ATC and a Pavlovian environment killed an airliner.

The busy airplane controller was relieved of a significant workload when the helicopter assumed responsibility for themselves. A helicopter-only controller could have stayed on top of the situation and had them slow up, turn around, go orbit something, or 101 other ideas that didn't involve squeezing between an airplane on short final and the river.

* re the NVGs, I found an old video I shot of trying to drive with mine and coming around a corner to a bright street light at first the light bloomed across a good portion of the display and then the thing ramped down gain until the light was a pinpoint surrounded by black. Good thing I had it on one eye! I assume that if you have them on and look at a landing plane with lights on you get the same, either blooming or black with pinpoints.

Yeah, 1.5Nm is a pretty broad flat rule but I could see an argument for tighter separation particularly where the aircraft is established on an ILS and the helicopter has a fixed obvious route. I don't think holding the helicopter at Hains Point while an aircraft does a visual approach to 33 is sensible, but it might be reasonable for an ILS into 1.

I'm still going to argue that a helicopter on Route 4 from DCA to the Wilson Bridge or across Route 6 is unacceptable while there's an approaching aircraft below 700ft.

Rather than gating the use of Heli Route 4 based on whether there's an a/c on approach for Rwy33, it would be significantly easier to do the opposite. No approaches to Rwy33 while a Heli is transiting Route 4. The runways intersect anyway so there isn't much advantage in throughput to using Rwy33 in addition to Rwy1.

I'd still question running Rwy 1 approaches while there's route 4 traffic. Landing plane gets a little down and right of glideslope and bang.

My understanding is that the FAA depicted width of a helicopter route is governed by the following doc: https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/flig...2-complete.pdf . It specifies that on a fully printed chart the route should be 0.1 inches wide regardless of chart scale. The chart I pulled from was 1:125,000 scale (full chart size is 51x33 inch poster), which would mean the routes "appear" to be 125,000 * 0.1 / 12 = 1,042 ft wide. In the same FAA chart package https://aeronav.faa.gov/visual/12-26...-Wash_Heli.pdf , the third page is a "Washington Inset" with a scale of 1:62,500. In that inset the routes "appear" to be 62,500 * 0.1 /12 = 521 ft wide. Also, if you look at the centerlines of the routes depicted on those two pages (which I "drew in" below), they do not exactly match. For example, look at how the full chart shows the route going east of Hains Point while the inset shows it very close to Hains Point.


DCA Helicopter Routes

Given these chart differences, I wonder how far a helicopter can stray from the various depictions of a route before it is considered a pilot deviation? Perhaps the NTSB will give us some insight with their accident report.

Today's briefer said: "On this chart, you'll see the routes they were generally following Helicopter Route 1 to Helicopter Route 4. These routes are designated by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and - although you see blue lines - there are no defined boundaries to these routes."

From the Baltimore-Washington Helicopter Route Chart:

"RT. 4: FORT WASHINGTON OVER POTOMAC RIVER TO WILSON BRIDGE. THEN VIA EAST BANK
OF POTOMAC RIVER TO ANACOSTIA RIVER. INTERCEPT ROUTE 1 AT ANACOSTIA RIVER.

ALTITUDES: AT OR BELOW 1000 FEET MSL AT FORT WASHINGTON, DESCEND TO 600 FEET
MSL ABEAM BROAD CREEK INLET, BEGIN DESCENT FROM 600 FEET MSL TO
ARRIVE AT 300 FEET MSL OVER WILSON BRIDGE, THEN AT OR BELOW 200 FEET MSL NORTH
OF WILSON BRIDGE.

It would seem to me that "OVER POTOMAC RIVER" and "VIA EAST BANK OF POTOMAC RIVER" would indicate some sort of "boundary."

I think that this Helicopter Route Chart is poorly done and would like to know how the FAA designates helicopter routes and who designs these charts.

In my opinion the New York Special Flight Rules Area charting and text On the New York Terminal Area Chart is done much better.

I hadn't intended to go all the way along the causal chain in my post. But since you ask, I think your answer only goes one step further. There are more steps to take.

Helicopters in busy airspace are not a problem if a safe system exists for separating them from airline traffic.

There is no evidence yet of the controller having made a mistake. He was undoubtedly busy, but that was not his fault. What could be done about it? The answers to that question take us another step along the causal chain:

1. The FAA could have provided more controllers. We know the helicopter controller position was unoccupied, and it's likely that closer monitoring and earlier intervention could have changed the outcome (notwithstanding point 3).
2. Controller workload could have been reduced by implementing effective procedural separation . If the DCA ATC rulebook allowed this segment of Route 4 to be in simultaneous use with Runway 33 landings, then procedural separation did not exist , however much anyone thought it did. At least 1.5nm or 500ft between flight paths would be needed to meet the least restrictive FAA separation standards, and this would have forced constraints to be applied to Route 4 or Runway 33 utilisation.
3. Regulations allowed the helo pilots to assume responsibility for separation. This is what happened, with the consequences which flow from the inherent difficulty of identifying and separating visually at night (especially while wearing NVG).

The authorities (by which I mean FAA and DoD) have questions to answer on all three points. Why was the helicopter controller position vacant? Did the ATC rulebook or staffing requirements rely on a false assumption that procedural separation existed? How did any such assumption remain in place after previous near misses? Is visual separation between helicopters and airline traffic a reasonable thing for regulations to permit, at night and using NVG? Ultimately it seems to have routinely been used as a release valve for the pressure building in the system due to the failure to address points 1 and 2.

Hopefully the investigation will be bold enough to ask these questions, which expand the potential scope of responsibility well beyond the individual controller and pilots.

Whilst these are valid observations, it is also micro-managing a procedure whose altitude separation was always totally flawed. I cannot personally attribute any blame to ATC or either pilot when the scenario was so badly devised ... and that means not only the infamous Route 4 but the concept of visual separation in the dark.

It was doomed to fail, eventually, but sadly someone [other than those directly impacted] never saw it coming. THEY are the culprits.

MPN11, former Mil ATCO

Pretty much it, everyone had to be lucky every time, gravity only had to be lucky once. The altimeter issues are a red herring at best, the helicopter crew were not trying to go directly under the airplane.

Sad to see the NTSB reporting PAT25 was between 278" and 313' in the seconds before the collision instead of 'at or below' 200' OK, PAT25 seems to attract much of the blame for the impact, but that doesn't detract from the unsuitability of Route 4 in the broader sense.

The route doesn't provide safe clearance, is the answer. Even if they didn't collide, I can't imagine the ride being particularly gentle after something that size passes ~50ft overhead. Even the near miss might have resulted in a critical loss of control.

She said there were no defined boundaries, though there were marked in blue on the maps. As already noted here, the width of the routes (as marked on the maps) is different from one map to another, especially when not at the same scale. There is a good reason for not having precise boundaries, they are VFR routes and there is no means to determine the position from the center of the route with a good accuracy, it is just visual navigation. And at night.

This just a catchy phrase to make passengers comfortable, just like the : " Staff are the most important asset of our company " on can see in the reception hall of many companies nowadays . The shareholders must be smiling a bit when passing thought those banners...

As many and I said before, discussion about Altimeters or width of VFR routes are just distractions to deflect from the real cause , which for me can be resumed into the lack of a safety assessment and safety case of existing procedures. We all had to do this when SMS was widely introduced in the late 90s It was not that easy , but we discovered a few holes that were closed.
Here in DCA we see a couple of procedures that would not have passed a safety case : e.g Route 4, Circling to RWY 33 with that route active, visual separation at night , use of NVG on that route ..etc,,

Flying in itself always bares a risk,, our job is to minimize the risk , not to eliminate it , but here the Regulatory ( i.e FAA) failed to minimize the risks.
As in the US the FAA is both the service provider and the Regulator , and is in addition dependent of political will and pressure for its funding , the willingness to implement unpopular measures, may be limited. A Judge might look into this differently but for those part of the discussion I hand over the floor to .Willow run 6-3 .

Why is route 4 set at 200ft? What is above it that prevents it being at a sensible height where it crosses approach paths?

Re the height deviation. When flying a helo at 200ft at night over a black hole (the river) you are very conscious indeed of your extremely low height. If told of conflicting traffic that you have to search for over/amongst city lights your attention is considerably diverted from pure flying and the natural tendency would be to squeeze back a little on the cyclic. I imagine that would be even more the case if NVGs were in use, tho I've no experience with them. That is a likely cause of the otherwise surprising altitude deviation tho we'll never know.

This one got deleted because it was connected to a previous post that was deleted. I do think it's an important part of the record so I've reposted it here with appropriate modifications. Hope that's OK.

The more posts I've read on this thread, the more I'm anticipating that court actions seeking compensation for the families of the people killed in this accident will encounter very tough barriers.

This is an excerpt from a website of an actually well-known, very accomplished, and respected group of lawyers who specialize in (among other things) aviation matters. I'm not using their name and I don't have any approval, express or implied, to use information from their website - but if justice is to be sought for the victims' families, public discussion is - or should be - encouraged.

"A discretionary function is an action of a governmental nature exercised by a federal employee, but in order for that action to be considered a discretionary function, it must pass a two-part test:

There must be an element of judgment or choice. That is, if a federal statute or regulation prescribes a course of action for an employee to follow, there is no discretion.
That judgment or choice must be susceptible to policy analysis.
The Federal Tort Claims Act contains a discretionary function exception that says the U.S. cannot be held liable for any employee\x92s failure to exercise or perform a discretionary duty.

Within the legal field of aviation accidents, discretionary duties for which the U.S. is not liable include the following:

Aircraft \x93spot check\x94 certifications
Weather forecasting
Failure to install equipment
The FAA\x92s design of flight procedures
The types of actions that are considered not discretionary, and therefore, open the U.S. government to litigation are:

The failure to issue air traffic control manual warnings
If air traffic control fails to warn of weather dangers
The failure to maintain equipment
Relaying incorrect instructions to pilots."
END OF EXCERPT [not intended as legal advice here or on its original internet page]

So to return to ATC Watcher's point...... the more posts I read about this midair collision (plus other information such as NTSB briefings) the more I am anticipating that it will require an act of Congress to provide for compensation for the families of the victims. Isn't it the obvious fact that convenience for people who work in Washington and travel "back home" generally speaking on weekends and when Congress isn't convened, is a prime and central reason for the way DCA airspace has been constructed and managed? Is it really going to be the case that because the lawsuits will - in all likelihood - fail to overcome the "discretionary function" exception, that the 67 families will be without a remedy? Is that how it works, then?

In case anyone thinks my sense of being horrified at this accident is clouding reason or logic, consider this - the book Collision Course discusses the PATCO union's genesis, the strike, and so on. PATCO's earliest stirrings resulted in large part from the 1960 midair over New York. Is the United States aviation sector willing to accept an outcome of this accident that in effect travels back over six decades? The point is, given the long-term shortage of ATCOs in this country . . . I don't think a court is capable of ruling that the situation, allowed and in fact enabled by Congress and successive White House presidential administrations, is subject to "negligence" analysis in the currently applicable legal sense. All this being said, this is how I arrive at thinking that in the interests of justice, some other means of providing for the loved ones of 67 souls who were on board needs to be determined and implemented.

Absolutely . Lack of Wake turbulence separation is something that immediately came to my mind when discovering the procedure . That should have been another red flag in the Safety assessment , but I assume initially the H routes were designed with RWY 1 OPS in mind and 33 only for departures. Combining 33 Arrivals with route 4 is the initial issue .
Indeed , and there is a precedent : the 1986 Cerritos collision : the NTSB found no responsibility to ATC as the pilot of the PA28 that hit the DC9 had entered Los Angeles Terminal Control Area airspace without the required clearance. However a judge found the FAA partly responsible to make sure the families of the pax , mostly Mexicans , would be compensated , as the responsible private pilot's wealth would not have been able to cover those.
Here if you want to learn or just refresh your memory ; https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-...%20government.

As an aside , the NTSB conclusions of that collision are interesting compared to our DCA accident : ( exactly 40 years ago !)

Yes history often repeats itself . just like the PATCO history...