thank you for your reply!
Originally Posted by
DIBO
not intending to be cynical, but it makes the helos blend in nicely with the background, sort of out of the way for rwy 01/19 traffic (=95% of total)
I wonder how many pilots on rwy 01/19 really perceived this section of the routing as unsafe (when flown correctly = hugging the shoreline at max 200ft).
It looks safe if the jet crews can't see the helicopters?
taking the nearby airport out of the equation, I wonder if any of the professional operators on this route 4 section, ever felt that this low-level flying was (unnecessarily) unsafe
Good thing they let only professional operators use heli route 4, then.
I take your point that the route was legal (if unsafe).
My impression is that the 500/1000 ft clearance rule exists so when a pilot gets disoriented, or suffers a flight control problem, they don't immediately smash into things; and that they have a chance to find a suitable place to
crash land, should the need arise. The latter is obviously solved when the river is right there.
If you don't have that altitude, you're missing a slice of cheese; and of course you won't feel it missing unless you need it, which is often the case with safety.
If the heli route had been higher up, then letting helicopters fly it on visual separation while runway 33 was in use wouldn't be "normalising deviance", it'd be normalising insanity, i.e. the illusion of "safety" that the 200 ft restriction provided would have been absent. The fact that someone at the FAA thought, "it'll be ok if we force the helicopters down to an unsafe altitude routinely" speaks of eroded safety standards to me. There are some disasters (and at least one impressive Space Shuttle fireball) that resulted from eroded safety standards, where managers convinced themselves it would still be ok--until it wasn't.