The "Fork in the Road" Email Sent to Government Employees, Stress, and the DC Mid-Air Collision

I’m a management professor and have some knowledge of human behavior. I’m also a licensed private pilot. I don’t fly big iron or carry dozens or hundreds of passengers like commercial pilots, but with my wife and daughter in tow, the cargo is precious to me, and I take it seriously. When I fly, I interact with the same dedicated air traffic controllers as the pros. I’ve landed at the busiest airport in the world, Atlanta’s Hartsfield Jackson, several times, where I’ve taxied between regional jets and 737s. I’ve lost my primary instruments in bad weather declaring an emergency, and once, on final approach into Philadelphia, I hit the button to drop the landing gear only to lose all electrical power, meaning no radios, and the landing gear wouldn’t go down. I flew over the field at 1000’ fumbling for the backup radio. In every engagement, and especially in these stressful cases, I’ve found ATC to be helpful, professional, and capable EVERY SINGLE TIME. It’s rare to say that about any organization but that’s been my experience with ATC. ?

Being an air traffic controller is tough. High stakes, fast pace, and cognitively demanding work make it a high stress job. Most of us can have a bad day at work and someone might wonder, “gee, what’s wrong with him today…he seems off”. You might make a few mistakes in your routine tasks because of some stress at home that is occupying your mind. Or, if you are an athlete, you might have a bad game and people say, “she’s just off…having a bad game today…in a bit of a slump”. ATC doesn’t get that privilege because lives are literally at stake with every call they make. ?

With that in mind, consider an issue no one seems to be talking about after the Washington DC mid-air collision on Wednesday. Just one day before the crash, all government employees, including those at the FAA, received the now infamous “fork in the road” email from the government, likely spurred on by DOGE head Elon Musk, offering a form of “deferred resignation”. ?The full email can be read here but the details are simple:

• Work force is going to shrink
• If you stay, your job or even agency might change or you might be let go (direct quote: “At this time, we cannot give you full assurance regarding the certainty of your position or agency, but should your position be eliminated you will be treated with dignity and will be afforded the protections in place for such positions”)
• You can resign now and, even if your position gets eliminated, you will get paid for next 8-months
• You must decide by Feb. 6

Talk about stress! Imagine going home Tuesday after getting that email. If it were me, I’d have a long talk with my wife, contemplate options, and begin making a plan. I’d consider if my skills are transferable to another position with similar pay. Would I have to move. Sell my home. How will it affect by daughter. And more.

It would be understandable if you went into work the next day, perhaps not having as good of a night’s sleep as you might have had normally. ?We’ve all had days like this…you seem fine but, on the other hand, you might not be as fast or as sharp as you are at your best.

To be clear, I’m not blaming the crash on the controller. The aviation system is full of redundancies so a single point of failure shouldn’t result in an incident problem. It’s common for incidents in aviation to come after a string of unfortunate mishaps and, in training, we are taught to “break the chain”. The idea is to recognize early how one event can snowball into another and then another that ultimately results in a crash. Further, while ATC is responsible for directing planes safely from one location to, pilots have the responsibility and authority to exercise judgement to maintain safety as well. In the case of this incident, the pilot was flying Helicopter Route 4 which allows for a maximum altitude of 200 feet. The collision occurred at between 300 and 400 feet. Had the pilot been at the correct altitude, it likely would not have happened.?

If you have ever flown a plane (and I assume helicopters are similar), you can gain 100 feet in mere seconds of inattention or distraction. It’s the pilot’s job to not let this happen, but every pilot has been there. A moment to tune a radio, check a chart, or communicate with passengers or ATC and, all of a sudden, you are 100 feet or more off your intended altitude. Heck, even the process of looking for the traffic might create the conditions where you lose your focus for just a moment, and that’s all it takes.

But we have redundancies. Once though the controller alerted the helicopter pilot to the traffic, the helicopter pilot acknowledged having it in site and was told by ATC to pass below and behind the plane, the pilot is responsible to see and avoid. But the controller has the ability to keep an eye on the radar scope and issue further instructions or warnings. I’ve gotten these from time to time where I controller nudges me noticing my path or altitude is drifting.

Now back to the life stress part. Research is clear that stress outside of work can cause depletion, reducing one’s ability to focus, handle complex tasks, and solve problems. More important, even if tasks are performed with skill, mental focus, detection of problems, and the speed of reaction time to stimuli or changing conditions can be severely diminished by the mental depletion caused by stress.

News coverage has shown recordings of the radar scope from ATC that show the altitudes of the two aircraft. If you look closely, you can see the altitude of the plane is 400 feet and the helicopter descends from 300 to 200 feet. Just before the collision, the plane drops to 300 feet as it was about to touch down and the helicopter is back at 300 feet. Other coverage shows maps indicating the helicopter wasn’t hugging the eastern shore of the Potomac River, opposite the runway which was on the western side of the river, as is depicted on the charts for the area.

Perhaps this crash happens every time. Alternatively, maybe a controller, with a tad less life stress and at their 100% best, recognizes the helicopter is both too high and too far west, sees the potential for collision even with the pilot saying, "traffic in site" (maybe controller sees that pilot could be focused on wrong plane), and quickly gives instructions to turn back east. And maybe on this day, with the stress of the email the day before, the controller was just a few percent off and missed that chance. ?

Of course we will never know for sure. But I also don’t think it’s a stretch to say that stress might have caused one of the backups to fail that day. Like with all aviation incidents, it’s rarely one thing, and it’s completely reasonable to consider the stress of that email as one possible link in the chain that caused the mid-air collision. In that case, some of the blame should accumulate beyond the helicopter pilot and controller but a tad further north at 1600 Pennsylvania avenue where the President was responsible for the order to send that email the day before without any consideration for how it might affect those doing mission critical jobs.?