NASA · Aviation Safety Reporting System
Air carrier Captain reported a near miss with a helicopter departing a hospital under the approach course. The Captain leveled off to avoid the traffic, performed a go around, then returned to land safely.
What is ASRS?
The Aviation Safety Reporting System is NASA's voluntary, confidential, non- punitive incident-reporting system, established 1976. Pilots, controllers, dispatchers, and maintenance technicians file reports describing safety- relevant events. NASA de-identifies every report before adding it to the public database. Reports are not investigated by NASA, the FAA, or the NTSB — they represent the reporter's perspective.
Pilot narrative
Verbatim from the de-identified NASA record. First-person account by the
reporter. NASA strips identifying details (names, company, specific time);
anonymization placeholders are ZZZ,
X, Y.
Going ZZZ to SHV we were doing the RNAV 24 and got an RA at 1300 feet for a aircraft taking off from one of the hospitals just under the approach course. Helicopter came within 400 feet of our aircraft and RA was received stating “level off―. First Officer (FO) was Pilot Flying (PF) and disconnected auto pilot immediately and leveled off to clear the conflict. We then executed a go-around because the approach was no longer stable and we were too high. We came back around and landed with no issue. Cause: ATC. Other pilot lack of situational awareness.
NASA classification — Anomalies
- ATC Issue
- Conflict
- Inflight Event / Encounter
NASA classification — Assessments
- Contributing Factors / Situations
- Airspace Structure · Human Factors · Software and Automation · Procedure
- Primary Problem
- Procedure
ASRS reports are voluntarily submitted, de-identified by NASA, and represent the reporter's perspective. The presence of reports on a topic cannot be used to infer prevalence in the National Airspace System. The authoritative source is the NASA ASRS Database Online at asrs.arc.nasa.gov ↗.