The FAA publishes supplemental charts specifically for helicopters in areas with high concentrations of helicopter activity: https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/flight_info/aeronav/productc...

Specifically the Baltimore-Washington route chart was relevant for these flights: https://aeronav.faa.gov/visual/10-31-2024/PDFs/Balt-Wash_Hel...

If you find the DCA airport on that chart, you’ll find routes 1 and 4 which roughly correspond to the helicopter’s flight path.

Right.

Helicopter was on Helicopter Route 4, per the map, apparently on course.

Aircraft was on approach to Runway 33, apparently on course.

That helicopter route crosses the approach to runway 33.

That's controlled airspace. How did they both have clearance to be there?

We'll know more tomorrow as all the audio and radar recordings are examined.

They were almost certainly both cleared to maintain visual separation.

> They were almost certainly both cleared to maintain visual separation.

DCA TWR: PAT25, traffic just south of the Woodrow Bridge, a CRJ, it's 1200 feet setting up for runway 33.

PAT25: PAT25 has the traffic in sight, request visual separation.

DCA TWR: Visual separation approved.

Audio of MID-AIR CRASH into Potomac River: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiOybe-NJHk

This comment was written by a US Coast Guard helicopter pilot. It gives a lot of information on how the two aircraft should have been able to share the space and some speculation on what went wrong:

https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1idba8i/comment/m...

That makes sense.

A helicopter instructor suggests that possibly the helicopter pilots, who were told to go behind an aircraft that was landing, were looking at the previous aircraft that was landing.[1] That's just speculation at this point.

[1] https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2025/01/29/reagan-national...

They could use the car autopilot solution: simply negotiate your coordinates with nearby traffic instead of trying to parse malformed visual data.