Helicopter-Airplane Mid-Air Over the Hudson

The FAA has instituted new rules designed to keep sightseeing helicopters from colliding with airplanes that are transitioning the Hudson River Corridor near the Statue of Liberty.  The San Francisco Daily Journal, California’s largest legal newspaper, published this column on how the new rules came to pass, and why they aren’t enough.

FAA and

NTSB Chairman Deborah Hersman’s recent testimony before congress concerning the mid-air collision over the Hudson raises more questions than it answers.  She stated that  the Teterboro controller instructed the Piper pilot to switch to frequency 127.85 to contact the Newark controller.  But before leaving the Teterboro frequency, according to Hersman, the pilot read back to

We count on the NTSB to get the facts right. That confidence is, unfortunately, sometimes misplaced. The truth is that the NTSB gets it wrong. A lot. I’ve written about that herehere, and here.

The NTSB has now given us further reason to question whether it deserves the confidence weATC Radar place in

Compared to pilots in other countries, pilots in the US have extraordinary freedom. Of course, to keep commercial airliners safe from collisions, pilots of small aircraft are excluded from certain Author Over Statue of Libertyairspace near major airports unless they have first obtained a clearance from air traffic controllers.  If a pilot obtains the necessary clearance, controllers will dictate the