Comment by howard941
8 months ago
Yes, you're right, lousy airspace design. Flown perfectly the chopper should have been no closer than 75' from the airplane if everyone is flying exactly on altitude (which never happens, you have to give at least +/-50'). Couple that with the difficulty of picking out an airplane against the hundreds of backlights of the valley and disaster was inevitable.
The FAA says that I can't fly closer than 500 ft to a shed in the desert, but a Blackhawk is fine to be within 75 ft of a part 121 airliner in a bravo.
Yeah but the Blackhawk requested visual separation. It shouldn't have, it couldn't tell the difference between the CRJ and any number of lights around it. Anyway, at that point the request was granted and you see how it ended.
I recall the tower establishing that they could maintain visual separation, not a request being made from the helicopter. My point is that if everything had gone perfectly, as little as 75 ft of separation would be provided. This is unacceptable in this context for reasons should have been clear ahead of time, but very unfortunately are made clearer in hindsight.
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