Washington DC plane crash black boxes found as questions mount over airport staff shortage claims
Divers have recovered the black boxes from the plane that crashed into the Potomac River in Washington DC after colliding with a helicopter.
Washington’s fire divers aim to “salvage the aircraft” and find additional components as the recovery option resumes today.
The American Airlines jet was about to land at Reagan National Airport when it collided with an Army helicopter on a training flight.
The National Transportation Safety Board is studying the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder from the aircraft, which carried 60 passengers and four crew members, all of whom died in the crash. The three members of the helicopter crew also died.
Among the crash victims were people from Russia, China, Germany and the Philippines, including young figure skaters and people from Kansas, the state from which the passenger flight took off.
Authorities have not pinpointed a reason for the collision. The military said the maximum altitude for the route the helicopter was taking was 61 meters (200 feet) but it may have been flying higher. The collision occurred at an altitude of around 300 feet, according to flight tracking website FlightRadar24.
Senator Maria Cantwell, the top Democrat on the Senate Commerce Committee, questioned the safety of military and commercial flights separated by as little as 107m (350 feet) vertically and horizontally.
She also urged the government to reconsider allowing so many helicopter flights next to such a busy airport. Radio communications showed that air traffic controllers alerted the helicopter about the approaching jet and ordered it to change course.
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One controller rather than two was handling local plane and helicopter traffic on Wednesday night at the airport, a situation deemed “not normal” but considered adequate for lower volumes of traffic, according to a person briefed on the matter.
Defense 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.
It comes as President Donald Trump suggested without evidence that diversity efforts championed by the previous administration could have played a role, something that was met with backlash from senior Democrats.
Rev. Al Sharpton, president of the National Action Network civil rights group, said: “How can he make these brash statements when an investigation is barely under way?
“It doesn’t matter if these were DEI hires or Ivy League hires.
“What matters is the families who are grieving, who do not want to see this moment politicized by a president bent on peeling back DEI policies.”