Why do you think "best practices" are considered "best practices"? Is it because they lead to the most desired outcomes? If so, what do you think happens when best practices are broken?

Now I'll concede it's possible that RL can lead to finding new best practices. But that's not the case in the story relayed. It is only a good practice for the scenario because it was an unpiloted aircraft because it otherwise puts the pilot at too much risk (which is why the pilot say it was acting "as if" it had a death wish. He was anthropomorphizing it.) That still means it's bad practice when the goal is to save human lives.