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Route 4 (the helicopter route along the river) has a maximum altitude of 200 feet for helicopter. From the crash it seemed like the helicopter pilot wasn't strictly following the ceiling.

Everything eventually needs to land, so when you’re talking about an area around an airport, at low altitudes, that’s going to be a difficult thing to do. If you mix in helicopter traffic that needs to run at lower altitudes anyway, that is also near an airport, it becomes a much more difficult scenario to control.

Helicopter flies at 200ft. Planes landing have to traverse through 200ft. Therefore vertical separation impossible.

This heli route is just crazy.

Agreed. Seems that underlying all of this is "people doing inadvisable things because they can".

Update: Found the routes in the FAA HELDC PDF

https://aeronav.faa.gov/visual/12-26-2024/PDFs/Balt-Wash_Hel...

You'd think they would've figured this out by now. Hacker News to the rescue!