> Warrant Officer Eaves stated that it was at 300 feet and descending to 200 feet — necessary because the maximum height for its route closer to the airport had dropped to 200 feet. But even as it reached that juncture, Warrant Officer Eaves evidently felt obligated to repeat his instruction: The Black Hawk was at 300 feet, he said, and needed to descend
> Not only was the Black Hawk flying too high, but in the final seconds before the crash, its pilot failed to heed a directive from her co-pilot, an Army flight instructor, to change course.
> He told her he believed that air traffic control wanted them to turn left, toward the east river bank. Turning left would have opened up more space between the helicopter and Flight 5342, which was heading for Runway 33 at an altitude of roughly 300 feet. She did not turn left.
As much as the article tries to balance it out that the controllers should have done more it seems that ultimately the pilot flying was distracted and not following instructions from the instructor sitting next to them. It happened at least twice based on the captured recordings.
Was there something in their personal life or career to warrant that - a setback, some family situation? Otherwise they seemed qualified and flew that route a few times already.
alistairSH · 3h ago
Was there something in their personal life or career to warrant that - a setback, some family situation? Otherwise they seemed qualified and flew that route a few times already.
Beyond her general lack of flight-time? Her primary role appeared to be some sort of liaison in DC, not flying Blackhawks.
No comments yet
pj_mukh · 52m ago
I mean maybe instead of patholigizing to that level we maybe need to accept that there is a temporal normal distribution to human attention spans and design our systems around it.
It feels like semi-autonomous ATC and flight controls were possible as of 5 years ago. Has FAA even started writing initial reports on this?
rdtsc · 17m ago
> semi-autonomous ATC
Yeah, that one has been around as long as there have been computers. It's sort of like the flying car of the ATC world - it's always 5 years away.
> temporal normal distribution to human attention spans
Tn this case we had both the ATC and the instructor tell the pilot to do something different and they didn't listen. Not sure if that's an attention span issue, it may be, but it's not clear it's definitely what it is.
YetAnotherNick · 3h ago
The warrant officer was the instructor and was training her. Few times doesn't make someone qualified. I think it was because of military egos and ranks, the warrant officer didn't force corrected the Captain.
Also why is training happening in such dangerous path where even if the instructions were followed the aircrafts could get as close as 30 m apart.
johnmaguire · 51m ago
Coincidentally, Nathan Fielder is currently doing an entire season of The Rehearsal based on the premise that a number of flight crashes occurred after the co-pilot failed to contradict or take controls from the pilot.
> Nathan Fielder studies airliner black box transcripts in which the first officer feels too intimidated to challenge the captain, leading to fatal crashes due to pilot error. He discusses this with John Goglia, a former National Transportation Safety Board member, who had once recommended roleplay simulation to improve pilot communication.
Really good season so far!
scrlk · 32m ago
> I think it was because of military egos and ranks, the warrant officer didn't force corrected the Captain.
I'd be shocked if the US military didn't provide crew resource management training for their aviators. This is exactly the kind of situation CRM is designed to prevent.
> I think it was because of military egos and ranks, the warrant officer didn't force corrected the Captain.
I think they should prohibit such type of flights when ranks are reversed. Let's imagine he would have yanked the controls and avoided the crash. Now the Captain could have said "you're insubordinate and tanked my qualification flight, there will be a price to pay".
rob74 · 40m ago
That's actually the crux of the matter - not only shouldn't they have done training (at night, with night vision goggles) in conditions where aircraft could be only 30 m apart, this construct of a helicopter flight corridor being within an altimeter's tolerance of the glide path for an airport runway shouldn't have been allowed to happen at all! It's unfortunate that the article focuses on who made what missteps and doesn't mention this systemic issue.
milkshakes · 2h ago
exploring this phenomenon is the premise of season two of "the rehearsal"
Onavo · 2h ago
A hundred feet in aviation unfortunately just isn't that much. It's the equivalent of driving 3 miles over the speed limit on the highway. I am not sure about rotorcraft but if you are flying a traditional Cessna for training, a bit of wind shear or updraft can easily change your altitude by hundreds of feet.
rdtsc · 1h ago
> A hundred feet in aviation unfortunately just isn't that much. It's the equivalent of driving 3 miles over the speed limit on the highway. I am not sure about rotorcraft but if you are flying a traditional Cessna for training, a bit of wind shear or updraft can easily change your altitude by hundreds of feet.
I would agree in general, but in that particular environment around DC with the restricted WH fly zone, the busy airport, the river and the bridges and the ADSB switched off it can make a huge difference.
xhkkffbf · 2h ago
> the instructor sitting next to them
Are you assuming pronouns? I'm pretty sure "she" is correct.
rdtsc · 1h ago
It shouldn't matter and I didn't want to bring their gender into the picture.
firesteelrain · 19h ago
I still don’t understand the policy of the Army at the time to allow disabling of ADS-B Out in civilian airspace. I can understand in wartime.
howard941 · 19h ago
The idea is that you're supposed to train as you fight.
yuliyp · 1h ago
The ADS-B transponder tells other planes where you are. It doesn't tell you where the other planes are. Turning it off when there are civilian planes doesn't improve your ability to aviate. it just hurts the situational awareness of the civilian planes who aren't supposed to be learning how to fight.
LgWoodenBadger · 18h ago
Within reason, which is why soldiers train with blank-firing adapters and blanks, and not live ordnance when simulating combat.
Turning ADS-B on/off likely has zero effect on the training/fighting relationship.
ceejayoz · 3h ago
The article says the reason is a bit different - that the route they were practicing is (in theory) sensitive information.
> But the Black Hawk did not operate with the technology because of the confidentiality of the mission for which the crew was practicing. That is because ADS-B Out positions can be obtained by anyone with an internet connection, making the system a potential risk to national security.
Seems like leaving it in listen-only mode would be wise, though.
alistairSH · 32m ago
The route is a public/known helicopter flight path. There's nothing secret about it.
Yes, this group transports VIPs and sometimes does so in secret. This training flight was a "simple" check-ride for the pilot (simple in scare quotes because part of the ride was using the NVGs, which strikes me as fairly ridiculous in the DCA air space).
ceejayoz · 28m ago
The route itself, sure.
When this specific helicopter/mission joins the route, how fast it goes, what callsign it uses, when it leaves the route, etc. may not be so public. Or at least be treated as "try not to make it unnecessarily public".
Overclassification is absolutely a thing, too. I recall when the Snowden NSA leaks came out, government employees were still forbidden from reading the documents, even if they were published in the newspapers. Pointless? Yes. But those were the rules.
xhkkffbf · 2h ago
They were coming back from Langley. I'm told it was just to "refuel."
ceejayoz · 1h ago
On one hand, I've got a reputable news organization publishing an article with specific information from experts, pilots, etc.
On the other hand, I've got an internet rando who once told me to Google up MGTOW saying "I'm told".
Which one would you find credible?
lobotomizer · 19h ago
Wasting innocent civilians out of sheer stupidity, checks out.
firesteelrain · 19h ago
I get that but in DC airspace near Reagan?
howard941 · 19h ago
Yes, you're right, lousy airspace design. Flown perfectly the chopper should have been no closer than 75' from the airplane if everyone is flying exactly on altitude (which never happens, you have to give at least +/-50'). Couple that with the difficulty of picking out an airplane against the hundreds of backlights of the valley and disaster was inevitable.
stefan_ · 18h ago
Its a switch in the cockpit. Does train as you fight mean you gotta hit the chaff dispenser aswell? Wheres the line?
shadowgovt · 17h ago
Almost certainly moving after this fiasco.
gwbas1c · 19h ago
> Doing so was Army protocol, meant to allow the pilots to practice secretly whisking away a senior government official in an emergency.
1: You don't want to do that for the first time in wartime.
2: In case you've been living under a rock, we are at war with Russia right now. We just haven't declared war.
lm28469 · 19h ago
I fail to see how flying untracked in a public airspace 8000km away from Moscow has anything to do with the US being in a new cold war, I don't see what good it brings, especially if it's to play hide and seek around a civilian airport
Hnrobert42 · 18h ago
The Russian Embassy is pretty close as is the Chinese. That said, they could easily track military helicopters with or without ADS-B Out.
firesteelrain · 18h ago
Easily? I suppose a surveillance radar on the roof of those embassies wouldn’t go unnoticed.
jamessinghal · 16h ago
American embassies do this worldwide, famously spying on Angela Merkel from the Berlin Embassy (probably). [1]
And how exactly does it help Russia to know there are planes and helicopters flying in the US around an airport
What's the next conspiracy? They have anti air weapons in embassies and wait for a military helicopter transporting a high value target?
Either way it's not worth 64 lives...
pc86 · 3h ago
It should be pretty obvious to anyone who's spent more than about 45 seconds thinking about it that you can gather good information about a potential enemy by watching how they train. For military and intelligence operations you want layered security, and you don't want to make intelligence-gathering operations against you any easier than you need to. So it makes perfect sense at least up to the moment of this crash that if you're operating military training flights in an area with a lot of foreign assets that you'd disable a feature that literally broadcasts where you are with telemetry once per second.
This mindset isn't conspiracy and framing it as such makes you sound like you have no idea what you're talking about.
> They have anti air weapons in embassies?
It'd honestly be pretty surprising if they didn't, but this is also why when countries officially go to war with each other the embassies are typically evacuated and/or evicted.
> Either way it's not worth 64 lives
Not a single person here or elsewhere is claiming otherwise.
chmod775 · 2h ago
You don't need radar to track aircraft with ADS-B on: The plane is actively broadcasting its position.
There's ADS-B receivers the size of a USB stick - because some are USB sticks and available for 50 bucks on Amazon.
firesteelrain · 2h ago
No, but if ADS-B is off then its not squawking unless its got like Mode-3 or Mode-S then maybe MLAT can be used.
firesteelrain · 19h ago
True, train as you fight. But this was like a check-ride for the young Captain. ADS-B Out didn’t need to be off.
shadowgovt · 17h ago
If we haven't declared war we're not at War. Words mean things.
Especially in this era when this administration seems to be gearing up for military action in domestic spaces when Congress has declared no war.
cafard · 5h ago
For how many years was the United States engaged in a declared war, and for how many other years did its military engage in substantial operations?
shadowgovt · 2h ago
I'm not excusing the malfeasance of past administrations when highlighting the malfeasance of this administration.
actionfromafar · 18h ago
At war with Russia, or at war with Ukraine? It's hard to tell these days.
flowerthoughts · 2d ago
Why is there a flight path along the Potomac river, right in front of a landing strip, at landing altitudes?
The article claims the helicopter was higher than it should have been, but isn't it safer to fly high across the airport if you're crossing?
kube-system · 20h ago
There's a lot going on in a small area there. Even without helicopters, the main runway (01/19) is the busiest runway in the nation, and it points directly at a no-fly zone over the white house, so the approach has a complicated turn at the last moment. Directly across the river, there's a military base with a heliport. And those helicopters often transport important individuals inside of those areas and to areas up and down the river. Those helicopters aren't just casually flying through, they are doing things in the immediate area.
Just as an example, look at a map and take note of where DCA is, where the Marine One hangar is, and where the White House is. All of this stuff is right around the airport.
queenkjuul · 20h ago
Doesn't fully explain why the military flight path runs right on front of the landing pattern for the main runway. Even with the proximity to each other, i don't see how that was necessary
kube-system · 20h ago
This accident didn't involve the main runway, but runway 33. Although -- look at a map -- runway 33 points across the river to a military base with a heliport. It seems obvious as to why military helicopters would have to be there.
Now, this particular flight wasn't landing there, but I don't think it is in any way confusing as to why military helicopters are in this area or taking these routes.
This is inherently very complicated and high volume airspace, and there is a lot of helicopters because there are important leaders who use military helicopter transport, not commercial airports, but many of the places they might be landing are all around DCA.
tbrownaw · 19h ago
> This is inherently very complicated and high volume airspace, and there is a lot of helicopters because there are important leaders who use military helicopter transport, not commercial airports, but many of the places they might be landing are all around DCA.
Three are occasional news articles and sci-fi worlds advocating for flying cars to replace normal cars. I imagine that would actually be like this situation but a gazillion times worse, rather than the promised elimination of traffic jams.
toast0 · 19h ago
Actually, its a great way to eliminate traffic jams. The vehicles involved in the collision will naturally exit the roadway. So long as the flame and smoke don't obscure visibility, traffic will unjam itself.
dylan604 · 18h ago
The naturally exiting vehicles then just rain debris down on whatever unsuspecting <insertWhateverHere>.
gymbeaux · 18h ago
My question would be “why not close down Reagan?” especially now that the DC Metro runs to Dulles. Yes, yes, Congress likes to fly into Reagan. Too bad.
Not only does Reagan have the same design problem as LGA and SFO (built before jetliners, runways too short), it’s incredibly close to restricted airspace. No civilian needs to fly into an airport that close to DC.
kube-system · 18h ago
The area has enough traffic to support three airports, and all three (DCA/IAD/BWI) carry between 26-27 million passengers a year, each. I don't think you could close one of them without some significant disruption to service.
Travel in/out of IAD from DC can take an hour, which is obviously why people there prefer DCA. And the flights there are all short-haul anyway, so many are the types of flights people are doing on short turnarounds.
janeerie · 2h ago
They're not all short haul. I can do a direct to DCA from SLC.
kube-system · 27m ago
There are a handful of exceptions (of which SLC is one), but broadly the airport is legally limited to destinations within a 1250 mile perimeter to keep long haul traffic at IAD/BWI.
gymbeaux · 3h ago
Well that settles it then, military aircraft will have to just turn on their ADS-B transponders when within X miles of a commercial/public airport
jandrese · 25m ago
I don't think IAD has the capacity to absorb the DCA traffic, at least not on a regular basis. Even if you include BWA I have my doubts that you wouldn't have to cut a bunch of flights due to gate or runway limitations.
gosub100 · 2h ago
A compromise could be to close it for arrivals during certain hours, opening up one entire side of airspace (depending on the wind).
The pain could be mitigated somewhat by adding seating areas and more aircraft parking while using larger planes. For instance, fewer flights total, consisting of 737s and a320s and eliminating flights that previously used shorter commuter sized aircraft.
gymbeaux · 1h ago
I think Midway (another old airport) is like this in that it’s “Southwest + some private flights”
standyro · 20h ago
the military gets what it wants in DC, and the pilots were too comfortable and on different radio systems (helo can’t hear airplanes and vice versa, air traffic control is their intermediary)
A disaster waiting to happen in retrospect. Similar issues at other airports like runway incursions, especially at crowded small airports like SFO and LaGuardia with antiquated runway layouts.
psunavy03 · 20h ago
Let's wait for the investigation to complete before we opine on what is or isn't a "disaster waiting to happen." The entire aviation system is a "disaster waiting to happen" unless you assume a baseline level of aircrew competence, and the question will be whether or not the aircrew fell victim to a systematic risk inherent in what they were doing, or whether they just screwed up.
Sad to say, as a former aviator, I have seen it before where people died and families lost loved ones ultimately because of a systematic risk inherent in what they were doing, but also other times because someone flat-out just screwed up.
tremon · 20h ago
FTA:
data recently analyzed by the board revealed that National Airport was the site of at least one near collision between an airplane and a helicopter each month from 2011 to 2024
I would say that statistic in and of itself qualifies as a "disaster waiting to happen". I agree that we should wait for the full report, but I don't think the GP is using hyperbole in this case.
goku12 · 54m ago
One near collision every month (minimum) for 13 years? How is that a disaster waiting to happen, as much as it is a case of wilful criminal negligence? How many near collisions are needed for the authorities recognize that it's an unacceptable risk? How did they let this happen?
jonah · 1h ago
That line really stood out to me. One would hope that someone would realize this was a disaster waiting to happen and make changes before it actually happened.
LorenPechtel · 19h ago
Relying on seeing another aircraft in the air at night is pretty much a disaster waiting to happen.
You don't see aircraft at night, you see lights. And they're over a city--a gazillion lights. Thus all you really see are moving lights. But if two objects are on a steady collision path neither moves relative to the other. Thus both sets of pilots would simply have seen stationary lights, invisible against a sea of stationary lights.
Animats · 20h ago
> Let's wait for the investigation to complete before we opine on what is or isn't a "disaster waiting to happen."
Yes. The info still isn't that good.
That said, allowing helicopter operations underneath a final approach path is iffy. Ops.group has a discussion.[1]
The helicopter did not cross the airport. The helicopter crossed the approach path to the airport, it was supposed to stay low enough not to be in the approach path. Then the pilot steered around the wrong plane and blundered right into the plane that they were supposed to be avoiding.
Politicians wanting contradictory things, oops.
jandrese · 22m ago
Ironically it would probably be safer if the helicopter crossed directly over the airport. At least then airplanes are usually on the ground, except for the cases where someone has to abort a landing and go around. Still dangerous, but it should happen less often.
psunavy03 · 20h ago
It's "safer" not to do a lot of things you do in military aviation, for one. And second, the flight path was deliberately plotted out requiring aircrew to maintain certain altitudes and stay within certain lateral boundaries to avoid other traffic. This is no different than any number of corridors like it around the country.
At some point, it's like saying "isn't it 'safer' not to take the freeway because everyone drives so fast?"
lupusreal · 20h ago
Training to evac politicians from what I understand. From wikipedia:
> "The helicopter was part of the Continuity of Government Plan, with the flight being a routine re-training of aircrew in night flight along the corridor."
Continuity of Government Plans is what they do when nukes get launched or a 9/11 sort of thing happens.
vkou · 20h ago
Should the people who had the most ability to prevent a global nuclear war be survivors of one?
That seems like a misalignment of incentives.
dkokelley · 20h ago
Not sure what the next best option here is. There was a thought experiment once where it would require the president to kill the key holder in order to launch a nuclear attack (the launch codes would be embedded in the designated key holder's heart). In theory this would make sure the president knew the seriousness of his or her actions, but it was never seriously considered as a protocol.
kube-system · 19h ago
The US's ability to respond to a nuclear attack is a deterrence to one beginning in the first place.
vkou · 15h ago
The chain of command is designed to be resilient enough to do so without having to bail the VIPs out of the frying pan they landed themselves and the rest of the world in.
They need to have as much skin in the game as everyone else.
tbrownaw · 19h ago
OTOH, turning "instigate a nuclear war" into a way to assassinate specific people also seems like a bad idea?
Mountain_Skies · 30m ago
Penn & Teller's book 'Cruel Tricks for Dear Friends' included a short story whose premise was a test to see if the president would be more likely to start a nuclear war if a safe bunker was available.
> Not only was the Black Hawk flying too high, but in the final seconds before the crash, its pilot failed to heed a directive from her co-pilot, an Army flight instructor, to change course.
> He told her he believed that air traffic control wanted them to turn left, toward the east river bank. Turning left would have opened up more space between the helicopter and Flight 5342, which was heading for Runway 33 at an altitude of roughly 300 feet. She did not turn left.
As much as the article tries to balance it out that the controllers should have done more it seems that ultimately the pilot flying was distracted and not following instructions from the instructor sitting next to them. It happened at least twice based on the captured recordings.
Was there something in their personal life or career to warrant that - a setback, some family situation? Otherwise they seemed qualified and flew that route a few times already.
Beyond her general lack of flight-time? Her primary role appeared to be some sort of liaison in DC, not flying Blackhawks.
No comments yet
It feels like semi-autonomous ATC and flight controls were possible as of 5 years ago. Has FAA even started writing initial reports on this?
Yeah, that one has been around as long as there have been computers. It's sort of like the flying car of the ATC world - it's always 5 years away.
> temporal normal distribution to human attention spans
Tn this case we had both the ATC and the instructor tell the pilot to do something different and they didn't listen. Not sure if that's an attention span issue, it may be, but it's not clear it's definitely what it is.
Also why is training happening in such dangerous path where even if the instructions were followed the aircrafts could get as close as 30 m apart.
> Nathan Fielder studies airliner black box transcripts in which the first officer feels too intimidated to challenge the captain, leading to fatal crashes due to pilot error. He discusses this with John Goglia, a former National Transportation Safety Board member, who had once recommended roleplay simulation to improve pilot communication.
Really good season so far!
I'd be shocked if the US military didn't provide crew resource management training for their aviators. This is exactly the kind of situation CRM is designed to prevent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crew_resource_management
I think they should prohibit such type of flights when ranks are reversed. Let's imagine he would have yanked the controls and avoided the crash. Now the Captain could have said "you're insubordinate and tanked my qualification flight, there will be a price to pay".
I would agree in general, but in that particular environment around DC with the restricted WH fly zone, the busy airport, the river and the bridges and the ADSB switched off it can make a huge difference.
Are you assuming pronouns? I'm pretty sure "she" is correct.
Turning ADS-B on/off likely has zero effect on the training/fighting relationship.
> But the Black Hawk did not operate with the technology because of the confidentiality of the mission for which the crew was practicing. That is because ADS-B Out positions can be obtained by anyone with an internet connection, making the system a potential risk to national security.
Seems like leaving it in listen-only mode would be wise, though.
Here's a map of the helicopter routes in the area. In this case, they were flying on route 4... https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3851p.ct004873/?r=0.67,0.258,0...
Yes, this group transports VIPs and sometimes does so in secret. This training flight was a "simple" check-ride for the pilot (simple in scare quotes because part of the ride was using the NVGs, which strikes me as fairly ridiculous in the DCA air space).
When this specific helicopter/mission joins the route, how fast it goes, what callsign it uses, when it leaves the route, etc. may not be so public. Or at least be treated as "try not to make it unnecessarily public".
Overclassification is absolutely a thing, too. I recall when the Snowden NSA leaks came out, government employees were still forbidden from reading the documents, even if they were published in the newspapers. Pointless? Yes. But those were the rules.
On the other hand, I've got an internet rando who once told me to Google up MGTOW saying "I'm told".
Which one would you find credible?
1: You don't want to do that for the first time in wartime.
2: In case you've been living under a rock, we are at war with Russia right now. We just haven't declared war.
[1] https://www.duncancampbell.org/content/embassy-spy-centre-ne...
What's the next conspiracy? They have anti air weapons in embassies and wait for a military helicopter transporting a high value target?
Either way it's not worth 64 lives...
This mindset isn't conspiracy and framing it as such makes you sound like you have no idea what you're talking about.
> They have anti air weapons in embassies?
It'd honestly be pretty surprising if they didn't, but this is also why when countries officially go to war with each other the embassies are typically evacuated and/or evicted.
> Either way it's not worth 64 lives
Not a single person here or elsewhere is claiming otherwise.
There's ADS-B receivers the size of a USB stick - because some are USB sticks and available for 50 bucks on Amazon.
Especially in this era when this administration seems to be gearing up for military action in domestic spaces when Congress has declared no war.
The article claims the helicopter was higher than it should have been, but isn't it safer to fly high across the airport if you're crossing?
Just as an example, look at a map and take note of where DCA is, where the Marine One hangar is, and where the White House is. All of this stuff is right around the airport.
Now, this particular flight wasn't landing there, but I don't think it is in any way confusing as to why military helicopters are in this area or taking these routes.
This is inherently very complicated and high volume airspace, and there is a lot of helicopters because there are important leaders who use military helicopter transport, not commercial airports, but many of the places they might be landing are all around DCA.
Three are occasional news articles and sci-fi worlds advocating for flying cars to replace normal cars. I imagine that would actually be like this situation but a gazillion times worse, rather than the promised elimination of traffic jams.
Not only does Reagan have the same design problem as LGA and SFO (built before jetliners, runways too short), it’s incredibly close to restricted airspace. No civilian needs to fly into an airport that close to DC.
Travel in/out of IAD from DC can take an hour, which is obviously why people there prefer DCA. And the flights there are all short-haul anyway, so many are the types of flights people are doing on short turnarounds.
The pain could be mitigated somewhat by adding seating areas and more aircraft parking while using larger planes. For instance, fewer flights total, consisting of 737s and a320s and eliminating flights that previously used shorter commuter sized aircraft.
A disaster waiting to happen in retrospect. Similar issues at other airports like runway incursions, especially at crowded small airports like SFO and LaGuardia with antiquated runway layouts.
Sad to say, as a former aviator, I have seen it before where people died and families lost loved ones ultimately because of a systematic risk inherent in what they were doing, but also other times because someone flat-out just screwed up.
data recently analyzed by the board revealed that National Airport was the site of at least one near collision between an airplane and a helicopter each month from 2011 to 2024
I would say that statistic in and of itself qualifies as a "disaster waiting to happen". I agree that we should wait for the full report, but I don't think the GP is using hyperbole in this case.
You don't see aircraft at night, you see lights. And they're over a city--a gazillion lights. Thus all you really see are moving lights. But if two objects are on a steady collision path neither moves relative to the other. Thus both sets of pilots would simply have seen stationary lights, invisible against a sea of stationary lights.
Yes. The info still isn't that good.
That said, allowing helicopter operations underneath a final approach path is iffy. Ops.group has a discussion.[1]
[1] https://ops.group/blog/the-dangers-of-mixed-traffic/
Politicians wanting contradictory things, oops.
At some point, it's like saying "isn't it 'safer' not to take the freeway because everyone drives so fast?"
> "The helicopter was part of the Continuity of Government Plan, with the flight being a routine re-training of aircrew in night flight along the corridor."
Continuity of Government Plans is what they do when nukes get launched or a 9/11 sort of thing happens.
That seems like a misalignment of incentives.
They need to have as much skin in the game as everyone else.
Username checks out :)
(One of these years we'll build a more specialized system for aggregating related links)