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.
Unfortunately, they don't always succeed. Every crash is a lesson learned too late. We endeavor to learn earlier than that, and when we don't, we make sure we learn in the aftermath.
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]
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.