RG;
The question then was asked Why did he hit the Crane? For me there is a much bigger question. Why did he fly JUST OVER a BLOODY GREAT BUILDING. If he knew the building was there flying over it would have been a clear 500ft violation. I can only deduce that he didnt know the building was there and the clear inference from that is because he had limited or no vizibility and maybe also wasnt completely sure of his exact location (his hold was not where his clearance to hold had been given and he had passed through R157).
Perhaps given the circumstances, flying over what you know to be the biggest building around was considered a good choice. Ok, so it may well have been 'violating the 500', but flying over the highest object ensures that other objects are below you and may be a good thing to hang a hat on. The jib possibly simply wasn't seen or maybe even being looked for.
Unfortunately...
From the SB;
During out-of-service periods, such as overnight, the jib was parked in the ‘minimum jib’ position, at a 65° angle above the horizontal. At the time of the accident this gave a total height from the ground to the tip of the jib of 719 ft.
As I said, flying over the biggest building in the area, given the circumstances, might have been intentional. As it happened, unfortunately the jib was still raised in its overnight position and 125ft above the building, because the operator was late for work.
The top of the building is
594ft and looking at the raised height of the jib and the impact point of about half way along be jib (counting the structure boxes), he flew around 65ft above the top of the building. Ok violating 500ft, but if the operator had been in work that hour earlier...on time, the jib height would have been that 125ft lower than it was. In that case, the incident wouldn't have happened.
One big thing to take away from this, is if the impact didn't occur, in all probability we wouldn't have heard how close it was.