[user104658]

Not uncommon for there to be a lot of helicopters around Washington (for obvious reasons) and from what I've been reading, there have been people (in aviation) saying for years that it's a risk, specifically, passenger planes on take off or landing colliding with a helicopter (exactly what happened). The timing perhaps seems sus with all of the political goings-on, but I think it was perhaps "an accident waiting to happen". People were raising concerns for a while.