@Background Pony  
You know, I’m not one to woobify everything without reason, but have you noticed that the Mane 6 and company get away with an awful lot of “yay” that they probably shouldn’t? Trespassing onto private, public and military property, being a public nuisance, multiple physical assaults (from Fluttershy!), theft/kidnapping (of pets), reckless endangerment, potential fraud, destruction of public property, unleashing hellbeasts and evil gods on the public, mass enchantments…really, this ep and Lesson Zero are the only times they’re punished more than a gentle reminder. Just because you saved the world a few times don’t mean you don’t have to follow the laws, girls.

@Tk3997  
Overthinking it, yes, but at least keeping close to the spirit of the show. You hit upon most of my qualms with the episode (which I still enjoyed) and addressed them in a way that doesn’t make Lightning Dust another poor victim of the cruel Mane 6 and their allies.
 
One observation I would add about Rainbow Dash: We’ve seen before (in “Sonic Rainboom”) that she can crack under pressure if she’s unsure of herself. She had been used to being far and way the best and fastest flier around, and now here she is within sight of gaining or losing her lifelong dream, and there’s a pony who seems to be as good as she is, if not better, and who’s garnering praise and rewards for her aggressive behavior. Given that, it’s not surprising she would bury her own doubts and go along with the alpha trainee as much as possible.

What mitigates it for me is the utterly abysmal job done managing the “training”. Spitfire was damn near goading them on until they finally got in over their heads and then seemed to go “oh shit” afterward. It doesn’t seem that Tornado was actually against any rules, it certainly seemed like she needed Dash to start it (so she had veto power), and it only even became a serious issue cause random people can apparently wander onto a quasi-military training ground totally unchallenged…
 
Up to that point she was kind of an ass, but not really much more so then Dash had been numerous times in the past. So really up to then Dash and even more so Spitfire are just as much to blame in my view. The hate really seems to come in due to her reaction after the fact, which was admittedly rather poor.
 
I suspect she’s just bad with people, or may hide her worries and stress behind bravado. (Gee I wonder who else we’ve seen do that) I also bet given her skills and likely confidence she probably has problems admitting mistakes. (again who does that remind us off…) So she might have just read things really wrong in this case and her attempt to brush it off and act ‘cool’ (recall that in the end no one was actually seriously injured) massively backfired.
 
That said I would bet she likely does have a much higher threshold for what she considers “dangerous” then the average pony. It is possible perhaps she didn’t view it as a huge deal, everyone was okay at the end so who cares? That is admittedly a possibly dangerous attitude, but it’s not necessarily mean or malicious. (and once more I can mention another Pony that often seemed to express similar views)
 
I have to admit Dash came across in the ep to me as more then a little hypocritical, and also very much lacking in understanding. It’s often cited as showing she’d “grown”, but I think a much better way to do that would have been to have see some of her own bad traits in Lightning Dust and help correct them over the course of the ep. Not just ignore things and muddle on blindly doing things she didn’t agree with.
 
That’s not growth, or character, or leadership. Just going along with whatever until it goes wrong and then going “I told you so! It’s his fault!” is pretty much the polar opposite of the last two. What I saw at the end with Dash wasn’t character, it was ass covering. She pretty much threw Dust under the bus, glossed over her own repeated failures to stand up and stop it before it go out of hand, and pretty much ignored her significant complicity in the incident.
 
All while showing seemingly zero awareness that she’d made similar failures in the past regarding ego, overconfidence, and insensitivity.
 
Was Dust some poor victim in this? No, she pushed the limits and was the trigger for the incident, but everyone else around failed as well. Spitfire did nothing to properly supervise or correct worrying behavior, Dash pretty much rolled right over and went along with it, and apparently no one else in the class bothered to speak up or challenge it either. The entire thing was a clusterfuck with blame all over and no one coming out smelling of roses…
 
And yet in a twisted sort of way that makes it all surprisingly realistic. It most often seems to be the case with accidents like this that when you start digging you find a potent mix of apathy, incompetence, and ego across most people involved. Ass covering abounds, blame is shifted, and the most visible ‘instigator’ takes the fall.
 
Or I might just be way over thinking this shit, that’s possible. Still I had to admit I kind of liked Dust because she was flawed, but in a fairly believable and not hugely over the top way.

Interesting. I wonder if she has as little regard for her own safety as she does for other ponies’? She seems overconfident, but maybe she just doesn’t care. Would that slightly mitigate the seriousness of her actions, does anyone think?

Well she is a skilled flier…. buuut I can bet since she always pushes herself, she can get in over her head. A lot.

Having her as a friend requires the constant activity of scraping her off of something.

Accident pone*