WASHINGTON — US authorities said on Thursday (Jan 30) it was not yet clear why a regional jet and a US Army helicopter collided at a Washington airport, killing 67 people in the deadliest US air disaster in more than 20 years.
Investigators recovered the so-called black boxes from the plane, an American Airlines Bombardier jet carrying 60 passengers and four crew members, which collided with an Army Black Hawk helicopter and crashed into the Potomac River as it prepared to land at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Wednesday night.
No one survived. Names of all the victims have not been released, but they included promising young figure skaters and people from Kansas, where the flight originated.
Senator Maria Cantwell said that the dead also included citizens from Russia, the Philippines and Germany, and Chinese state media Xinhua reported two Chinese citizens had been killed in the crash.
Investigators recovered the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder from the Bombardier CRJ700 passenger jet, the National Transportation Safety Board said. A preliminary report about the incident is expected within 30 days.
NTSB member Todd Inman said the military helicopter was equipped "with some form of recording devices and those will be read either by DOD or by us." He said NTSB and DOD have agreements to share data on those recorders.
The agency has begun collecting wreckage, including portions of the helicopter, and is storing it at a hangar at Reagan National. Washington's fire and emergency department said its divers had searched all accessible areas and would conduct additional searches to locate aircraft components on Friday.
US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said both aircraft had been flying standard flight patterns on Wednesday and there had been no breakdown in communication.
"Everything was routine up to the point of the accident," Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin told Reuters. More than half of the bodies had been recovered, he said. The airport is just across the river from Washington in Virginia.
President Donald Trump, without evidence, said that federal diversity efforts could have been a factor, reiterating a theme that has become a focus of his presidency. Rights groups and Democrats said he was politicising the disaster.
Trump also criticised the helicopter pilots and suggested air traffic controllers were to blame.
Radio communications showed that air traffic controllers alerted the helicopter about the approaching jet and ordered it to change course.
One controller rather than two was handling local plane and helicopter traffic on Wednesday night at Reagan National, a situation deemed "not normal" but considered adequate for lower volumes of traffic, according to a person briefed on the matter.
The decision to combine duties in the evening is not uncommon, the source said. The New York Times first reported the "not normal" designation.
A shortage of air traffic controllers in the United States in recent years has spurred safety concerns. At several facilities, controllers work mandatory overtime and six-day work weeks to cover shortages. The Federal Aviation Administration has about 3,000 fewer controllers than it says it needs.
Airspace is frequently crowded around the US capital, home to three commercial airports and several major military facilities, and officials have raised concerns about busy runways at Reagan National Airport. Several close calls at the airport have sparked alarm, including a near-collision in May 2024.
Trump accused his Democratic predecessor Joe Biden of lowering hiring standards and suggested the Federal Aviation Administration's diversity push could have weakened its capabilities.
The Trump administration has not provided any proof to back those assertions, and there is no evidence that efforts to make the federal workforce more diverse have compromised air safety.
Trump has moved quickly to quash federal diversity initiatives since taking office on Jan 20, drawing criticism from rights advocates who fear he is rolling back progress the United States has made to overcome its history of discrimination.
"The President has made his decision to put politics over people abundantly clear as he uses the highest office in the land to sow hatred rooted in falsehoods instead of providing us with the leadership we need and deserve," Derrick Johnson, president of the NAACP civil rights group, said in a statement.
Trump cited FAA policies stating that physical and mental disabilities would not on their own disqualify applicants from a controller's position. Those policies were in place throughout Trump's first 2017-2021 White House term, according to aides to Biden's transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg.
Buttigieg called Trump's remarks despicable. "As families grieve, Trump should be leading, not lying," he said on social media.
Trump's remarks contrasted sharply with those of other officials, who said there was no immediate indication why the crash occurred.
American Airlines CEO Robert Isom said the pilot of the American Eagle Flight 5342 had about six years of flying experience. The Bombardier jet was operated by PSA Airlines, a regional subsidiary.
Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said the helicopter was flown by a "fairly experienced crew" of three soldiers who were wearing night-vision goggles on an annual training flight. Officials said they were grounding other flights from the Army unit involved in the crash and would reevaluate training exercises in the region.
Air traffic control recordings appear to capture the final attempted communications with the helicopter, call sign PAT25, before it collided with the jet.
"PAT25, do you have a CRJ in sight? PAT25, pass behind the CRJ," an air traffic controller says at 8.47pm ET (9.47am SGT) on Wednesday, according to a recording on liveatc.net.
Seconds later, another aircraft calls in to air traffic control, saying, "Tower, did you see that?" — apparently referring to the crash. An air traffic controller then redirects planes heading to runway 33 to go around.
"I just saw a fireball and then it was just gone. I haven't seen anything since they hit the river," an air traffic controller says.
Webcam video of the crash showed the collision and an explosion lighting up the night sky.
It was the deadliest US air disaster since November 2001, when an American Airlines jet crashed after departing from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, killing all 260 people onboard and five people on the ground.
Reagan National's main runway is the busiest in the United States, with more than 800 daily takeoffs and landings. The National Transportation Safety Board has investigated nine accidents or incidents at the airport this century, including two that were fatal, records showed.
Source: Reuters
