[sethkim]

What's extremely confusing to me (as a private pilot) is that traffic is almost always routed directly over an airport (midfield), to safely avoid departing and landing traffic. The sense that I get is that it became routine for traffic to be routed directly through the glidepath in a staggered manner, likely because it's military.

Such unsafe habits (like driving without a seatbelt on) statistically will eventually result in a tragic outcome.

[kevinsundar]

Same, I live in San Diego where there are lots of military helicopters and activity in close proximity to SAN. I mostly see them go directly above the airport. I wonder what is different about DCA (maybe noise abatement?) why this isn't done.

[burke]

DC has a staggering density of restricted airspace; Reagan National has unusually tight approach/departure requirements... so it doesn't surprise me that if this was going to happen somewhere, it would be there.