There are a lot of red flags about the pilot herself.
She was obviously politically connected and actual serious flying never seems to have been a major part of her focus.
She was very low time and had very little recent flight experience. She should have been given about 10 hours of refresher flight time before being put into the high skills, demanding type of flight she was flying.
It's not like we are in the middle of a war and she needed to be pushed to the front. I suspect a lot of deference to her high visibility political position
Next, the entire control tower staff was a hot mess due to personal conflicts and Biden era air traffic control melt down. Hiring standards were down due to DEI, training was crap and the tower was short staffed due to Biden Admin manufactured hiring and training issues.
The controller on duty was directing both military helo traffic and civilian flights instead of the normal system of one controller for each and he may have been working a extended shift due to no show workers.
Last , the military never should have been running that mission . The route was fundamentally dangerous due to the helo flight path across the approach and most importantly, they were flying the route in full darkness and on NODs during the evening peak take off and landing traffic rush.
If they had just postponed the flight until after midnight they would have had the sky to themselves plus a more realistic flight training scenario of an emergency evacuation of DC .
But the military had to accommodate this politically well connected pilots desire to get back into flying while she was still employed with her political job and preoccupied with the chaos and stress of a bitter political power transition.
I wonder if she left the White House because she had TDS?
Are serving officers who work as escorts at DC functions political appointments?