Loading ...But I have navigated sailboats across the English Channel shipping lanes which are pretty busy, without radar, in fog, at night, bad weather etc. so with that background some observations on what has been reported.
The commercial jet was almost certainly not at fault. It’s a routine flight with a well established flight path. Unless there were specific instructions from the tower, then they are in the clear IMO. Like a container ship in its lane in the Channel.
I’m not sure how you can have 360/360 vision, i.e. in 3D from a helicopter but you should surely have 270 lateral view from the pilots seat with maybe 30 degrees up and down – but still a lot of blind spots, unlike my 26′ sailboat with Cap’n Ferret maintaining a 360 constant watch even though the big boats are only expected from one direction. Little boats might appear from anywhere. And surely in general the commercial flights will only be coming from one direction … they aren’t taking off into oncoming traffic … the commercial traffic will be one way, so the chopper pilot should have known which way to be looking.
If the tower is short staffed, they should have grounded the craft that they couldn’t deal with safely. Apparently due to a staff shortage the controller was dealing with the commercial aircraft as one job, and helicopters as another job. They should have said no choppers. Especially no choppers doing training flights because the pilot is inexperienced and because it is unnecessary. Asking if the chopper pilot could see a particular plane by code is pointless – you can’t visually identify a plane by its flight code at night.