The research and rescue teams work following the collision of American Eagle Flight 5342 and a Black Hawk helicopter which crashed in the Potomac river, with the Capitol Dome in the background, like de Virginia, United States, January 30, 2025.
Carlos Barria | Reuters
Washington – How a Black Hawk Army Black helicopter collided with American airlines Jet in a Mortal crash Wednesday evening, on the Potomac river, is still unknown, but key questions emerge, including on the altitude of the military helicopter.
The crash investigators recovered a flight recorder from the Sikorsky H-60 helicopter, adding to evidence that they will return, who already include interviews with air controllers, including that in service at the time of the accident, And the two plane recorders said the National Transportation Safety Board, Todd Inman.
The barges are on the way to lift the large pieces of the CRJ-700 from the Potomac river on Saturday, said Inman during a briefing.
The 64 people on the American flight 5342 and the three on board the helicopter were killed in the Fire dumplin collision Near the Washington, DC’s Reagan National Airport, marking the deadliest US Air Crash since 2001.
Forty -one body was recovered from the accident site, the head of Fire and EMS said on Friday, John Donelly at a press conference. Among these, 28 were identified positively.
“We have in aviation what is called a” approach to Swiss cheese “, in which if something fails, a backup should catch it, several layers of redundancy,” said Inman. “It’s been a long time since we have had an important aviation incident in the United States and that is why this is one of the safest forms of transport in the country.”
PSA Airlines Bombardier’s CRJ-700 plane was flying around 300 feet on the final approach on the National Reagan track 33 shortly before 9 p.m. Wednesday when it collided with the Black Hawk helicopter.
PSA Airlines is one of the American subsidiaries that steal regional roads, the flights marketed like American Eagle.
Emergency staff work near the accident site, with the American Capitol in the background, after the American Eagle 5342 flight collided with a Black Hawk helicopter while approaching Ronald Reagan National Airport Washington and crashed in the Potomac river on January 30, 2025.
Nathan Howard | Reuters
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the helicopter was on an annual skills training flight.
According to the rules of the Federal Aviation Administration, helicopters, which regularly cross Washington and around Washington, between the military bases, the Pentagon and other places, must fly in the area near the airport at a maximum of 200 feet .
“At DC, it’s a kind of unique environment,” said Inman during a briefing on Thursday. He noted that there are helicopter areas, or tracks in Washington. “This went from track one to four as part of their normal procedure. If you live at DC, you see a lot of helicopters going into this area. There is a very well defined system.”
The FAA will limit helicopter traffic around the area of Reagan National Airport, with some exceptions for medical evacuation and law enforcement operations, transport secretary Sean Duffy Said X Friday.
The airspace is among the most crowded in the country and Reagan national says that its main track is the busiest in the United States
While the investigation is underway, two out of three tracks are closed at the airport because of their proximity to the accident area. Terry Liercke, vice-president and airport director, told the press on Friday that he expects that these closures could last approximately a week.
Airport officials said more than 100 flights were canceled on Friday, citing track closings and bad weather.
“While you turn to align yourself on the track, your concentration is on the flight trajectory to get on the track quickly and have the plane stopped,” said John Cox, a retired airline driver and air -safety consultant.
The NTSB conducts the investigation into the collision which ended with a ball of fire. The agency said that it always collects information and that it is too early to draw conclusions.
“It’s not that we have no information. We have information,” said NTSB president Jennifer Homendy. “We have significant amounts of information. We must check the information. We must take our time to make sure it is correct.”
The NTSB has also recovered flight data and cockpit vocal recorders from the passenger jet. The boxes were taken to NTSB laboratories for evaluation, the agency said.
An NTTSB investigator works on the black box of American Eagle Flight 5342, which was involved in a collision with a Black Hawk helicopter, in a place unknown to this image of undated document published on January 30, 2025.
NTSB | Via Reuters
President Donald Trump Friday, wrote on Social truth That the helicopter “flew too high, by many. It was well above the 200 feet limit. It is not really too complicated to understand, is it ???”
Hegseth made a similar statement during a briefing of the White House on Thursday.
“Tragically, last night, an error was made,” he said. “There was a kind of elevation problem on which we immediately started investigating in the DOD and the army.”
The two declarations were unusual In the wake of an accident and the early stadiums of an investigation into the airline accident.
The accident ends a decade and a half of air-security in the United States, which has not experienced deadly commercial crash since 2009, even if passenger traffic has increased by more than 35% in recordings. This crash has caused a multitude of stricter and rest pilot training standards.
The shortages of air traffic controllers have been a concern for years, and a wave of close calls in American airports has been the subject of a meticulous examination of legislators and regulators.
(Note of publishers: The image contains graphic content) In this document from the American Coast Guard, the Coast Guard investigates the wreckage of planes on the Potomac river on January 30, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Brandon Giles 1st class memory | American Coast Guard | Handout | Getty images
The staff of Reagan National The night of the accident was not normal for the quantity of traffic and the hour of the day on the night of the accident, according to a preliminary FAA security report on the collision, A reported NBC News on Thursday.
Citing a source, NBC said the airport tower generally has a controller that focuses on helicopter traffic, although FAA guidelines make it possible to combine this position with a position of another controller, so that A controller controls both planes and helicopters. The FAA did not respond to a request for comments on the report.
NBC News reported on Friday, quoting a familiar source with the investigation that a Tower National Reagan supervisor left a controller to leave his quarter of work early.
Inman said on Friday that investigators will go back over the 72 hours or even air traffic controllers.
“We will examine their training, their hiring, everything, what they have probably eaten that day,” he said. “But this is not a point that tells us everything. It is superimposed on many other very critical information.”
