Reely340
How can tower clear some to land who has three helicopters below him in the pattern, but did report seeing only two of them?
Especially w/o sequencing him "cleared to land as number three" or something?
To my ear this sounds like a sewere ATC mistake, or am I mixing something up?
You're mixing up..... It is common over here to have helicopters operating below 500 ft in the traffic pattern but landing across on the crossing runway. They remain inside the FW traffic pattern at all times.
To give you an idea of what that looks like, here are the procedures for Long Beach, CA. You will see 6 pads on the diagram on Page 6. Pad 5 & 6 are rarely used, however the first 4 are used daily, with 4 helicopters operating at any given time. The traffic pattern remains tight between runways 25/7's. Airplanes will be doing right traffic on RWY 25R and left traffic on 25L with helos in the middle. The airlines then land and depart on rwy 30. Makes for a fun hour of training.
Procedures Here