No. of Recommendations: 5
Let's not get ahead of things here. It will take a while to figure out what happened in this incident. One thing that will need to be looked at closely is if the pilots of the two aircraft were following the instructions from ATC. The helo was instructed to maintain visual separation from the plane, and acknowledged that it had the plane in sight and would maintain that separation. Clearly, that didn't happen. The question is going to be why it didn't happen. Was the helo pilot looking at the wrong plane? (There were a number of other planes in the area, so that's certainly possible.) Did the controller give an instruction that couldn't be followed or was inappropriate? Lots of questions, zero answers at the moment. So let's not jump to conclusions.
I doubt there's anything that the FAA administrator could do directly here.
But this also points up that airspace around this airport is extremely crowded, with multiple flight restrictions. As a lay person, I question whether this airport should operate at all with the given restrictions. That WOULD be something the head of the FAA could address.
Bottom line, let's not turn this one into a political ideology contest. Trump's actions around leadership of various agencies is a separate issue from this crash.
--Peter
