Following on from January’s mid-air collision between a CRJ-700 operating on behalf of American Airlines on approach to runway 33 and an Army UH-60 on Helicopter Route 4 near Washington DC’s Reagan National Airport, the FAA has put in changes to the airspace design in the vicinity of the airport that specifically alters the helicopter zones and routes (see image).
The new airspace also requires all aircraft to use ADS-B Out (with very limited exceptions) while in the airspace. The boundaries of Zones 3 and 4 were reduced in size, moving them farther away from the airport, ensuring the required safe separation between helicopters and other aircraft. A new Broad Creek Transition has been established for helicopters travelling south of the airport, creating greater vertical separation from commercial aircraft on final approach to the airport.
The FAA has come under heavy criticism from aviation safety campaigners, who noted that in the previous design of the airspace, the vertical separation between the approach and the heliroute was only 75 ft (the same as the allowable error margin on a barometric altimeter). What created the most ire is that, despite the risk being pointed out by notables like the Flight Safety Foundation and the Air Line Pilots’ Association, as well as the remarkable number of near-miss events reported, including one just 24 hours before the collision, the FAA took no steps to correct the issue.
In March, following the publication of the NTSB’s preliminary recommendations, the FAA took action with several changes to the airspace design and procedures at KDCA. These included a permanent restriction on non-essential helicopter operations around DCA and eliminating helicopter and fixed-wing mixed traffic. Aircraft movements considered essential, such as priority HEMS, Law Enforcement, or Presidential transport, will be positively controlled to ensure separation. Simultaneous use of runways 15/33 and 4/22 will also be suspended when urgent helicopter missions operate near KDCA. (Some would argue that intersecting operations with land and hold short operation (LAHSO) is another accident waiting to happen, but that is a discussion for another day.) The FAA also took steps to limit the use of visual separation for Coast Guard, Marine, and Park Police helicopter operations in the areas, but outside the restricted airspace. These restrictions remain in force.
The accident also prompted the FAA to examine the airspace around Baltimore-Washington International Airport (KBWI) and several other cities with multiple airports and high volumes of helicopter traffic, including Boston, New York, Detroit, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles. The FAA is also assessing the U.S. Gulf Coast, including offshore helicopter operations. Nearly six months after the collision, we asked the FAA for an update on the progress of those studies and in a written response, the agency said, “We’re continuing our analysis of other “hotspot” airports. We are using machine learning and language modelling to scan incident reports and mine multiple data sources to find themes and areas of risk.”
Image: FAA
