Narrative:

On about 2 mile final; tower pointed out helicopter traffic at 500 AGL south of airport; I called in sight. As we came in to land; it appeared that the helicopter was going to remain just south of the runway. That was my assumption anyway. The last 50 feet until touchdown; the helicopter came over our landing runway and set up to land on ramp north of runway. I asked tower on roll out how she had expected us to go around had we needed to. She said the helicopter would have had to take evasive action to avoid us. I told her would be hard because I was looking at tail rotor and really wondered how he would even have seen us. I guess clearance was simply 500 foot separation with risk assumption by helicopter.[I suggest] not issuing that type of clearance and having only one aircraft on the runway at a time. By the time he crossed above runway; our safest course of action was to land. If we had gone around; we would have had to turn at least slightly and it would have been way too close for my comfort as he crossed about a third to half way down the runway. I'm not sure if it's a legal clearance; but it wasn't obvious to me what he was going to do until I didn't have many avoidance options. I didn't see a need for both to be that close. Helicopter could have hovered short of runway side and crossed centerline after we landed. [We are] not in a combat zone; [there is] plenty of time to land us separately.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: Air carrier Captain reported noticing a helicopter hovering about half way down the runway they were landing on. That could have posed a safety hazard had a go-around been necessary.

Narrative: On about 2 mile final; Tower pointed out helicopter traffic at 500 AGL south of airport; I called in sight. As we came in to land; it appeared that the helicopter was going to remain just south of the runway. That was my assumption anyway. The last 50 feet until touchdown; the helicopter came over our landing runway and set up to land on ramp north of runway. I asked Tower on roll out how she had expected us to go around had we needed to. She said the helicopter would have had to take evasive action to avoid us. I told her would be hard because I was looking at tail rotor and really wondered how he would even have seen us. I guess clearance was simply 500 foot separation with risk assumption by helicopter.[I suggest] not issuing that type of clearance and having only one aircraft on the runway at a time. By the time he crossed above runway; our safest course of action was to land. If we had gone around; we would have had to turn at least slightly and it would have been way too close for my comfort as he crossed about a third to half way down the runway. I'm not sure if it's a legal clearance; but it wasn't obvious to me what he was going to do until I didn't have many avoidance options. I didn't see a need for both to be that close. Helicopter could have hovered short of runway side and crossed centerline after we landed. [We are] not in a combat zone; [there is] plenty of time to land us separately.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.