Police boats combed the banks of the Potomac River on Friday, moving slowly under rainy skies and scanning the shoreline as investigators sought clues into the midair collision that killed 67 people and raised questions about air traffic safety around the nation’s capital.
No one survived the Wednesday night collision between the commercial airliner and an Army helicopter. More than 40 bodies have been pulled from the river as the massive recovery effort continued Friday, two law enforcement officials told The Associated Press. The officials were not authorized to discuss details of the investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Officials also heavily restricted helicopter traffic around the airport, an official said, hours after President Donald Trump claimed in a social media post that the Army Black Hawk had been flying higher than its allowed limit.
Planes continued to take off and land at Reagan Reagan National Airport after the worst US air disaster in a generation, with airport operations gradually returning to normal after a slew of canceled and delayed flights following the crash.
Investigators have already recovered the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder of the American Airlines plane, which struck the chopper as the plane was coming in for a landing at the airport next to Washington, DC. Officials are scrutinizing a range of factors in what National Transportation Safety Board Chairwoman Jennifer Hommendy has called an “all-hands-on-deck event.”
Investigators are examining the actions of the military pilot as well as air traffic control after the helicopter apparently flew into the jet's path. Air crash investigations normally take 12-18 months, and investigators told reporters Thursday that they wouldn't speculate on the cause.
Authorities were still looking for the helicopter's black box recorder, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Friday on Fox News Channel. Other factors in the crash, including the helicopter’s altitude and whether the crew was using its night vision goggles, are still under investigation, Hegseth said.
Although some of the airspace had already been restricted following the crash, the Federal Aviation Administration decided to indefinitely bar most helicopters from using the low-to-the-ground routes that run under or parallel to the airport’s flightpaths, an official told the AP on Friday. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.
Military aircraft frequently conduct such flights in and around the nation’s capital for familiarization with routes they would fly in case of a major catastrophe or an attack on the U.S. that would require relocation of key officials from the capital region.
“You need to train as you fight, you need to rehearse in ways that would reflect a real world scenario,” Hegseth said. He stressed that it remained the Pentagon’s duty to also mitigate risks, while conducting such training. But he underscored US forces need “to ensure, if unfortunately, there were a real world event where things needed to happen we could respond to it day or night.”
The plane carried 60 passengers and four crew members, and three soldiers were aboard the helicopter.
One air traffic controller was responsible for coordinating helicopter traffic and arriving and departing planes when the collision happened, according to a report by the FAA that was obtained by the AP. Those duties are often divided between two people, but the airport typically combines the roles at 9:30 p.m., once traffic begins to slow down. On Wednesday, the tower supervisor directed that they be combined earlier.
“The position configuration was not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic,” the report said.
A person familiar with the matter, however, said the tower staffing that night was at a normal level. The positions are regularly combined when controllers need to step away from the console for breaks, during shift changes or when air traffic is slow, the person said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal procedures.
The FAA has long struggled with a shortage of air traffic controllers.
Officials said flight conditions were clear as the jet arrived from Wichita, Kansas, carrying, among others, a group of elite young figure skaters, their parents and coaches.
A top Army aviation official said the helicopter crew was “very experienced” and familiar with the congested flying that occurs daily around the city.
“Both pilots had flown this specific route before, at night. This wasn’t something new to either one of them,” said Jonathan Koziol, chief of staff for Army aviation.
The helicopter's maximum allowed altitude at the time was 200 feet (about 60 meters), Koziol said. It was not immediately clear whether it exceeded that limit, but Hegseth said altitude seemed to be a factor in the collision.
Koziol said investigators need to analyze the flight data before making conclusions about altitude.
Trump said in a Friday morning post on his Truth Social platform that the helicopter was “flying too high” at the time of the crash.
“It was far above the 200 foot limit. That’s not really too complicated to understand, is it???” Trump said. His comments came a day after he questioned the helicopter pilot's actions while also blaming diversity initiatives for undermining air safety.
Flights at Reagan National resumed around midday Thursday.
Wednesday's crash was the deadliest in the US since Nov. 12, 2001, when an American Airlines flight slammed into a residential area of Belle Harbor, New York, just after takeoff from Kennedy Airport, killing all 260 people aboard and five people on the ground.
The last major fatal crash involving a US commercial airline occurred in 2009 near Buffalo, New York. Everyone aboard the Bombardier DHC-8 propeller plane was killed, along with one person on the ground, bringing the total death toll to 50.
Experts often highlight that plane travel is overwhelmingly safe, however. The National Safety Council estimates that Americans have a 1-in-93 chance of dying in a motor vehicle crash, while deaths on airplanes are too rare to calculate the odds. Figures from the Department of Transportation tell a similar story.
But the airspace around Reagan National can challenge even the most experienced pilots no matter how ideal the conditions. They must navigate hundreds of other commercial planes, military aircraft and restricted areas around sensitive sites.
Just over 24 hours before the fatal collision, a different regional jet had to go around for a second chance at landing at Reagan National after it was advised about a military helicopter nearby, according to flight tracking sites and control logs. It landed safely minutes later.
