Families of victims of the deadliest US air disaster in nearly 25 years visited the crash site on Sunday amid a swirl of ongoing questions on what caused the mid-air collision between a passenger jet and a military helicopter at an airport just outside Washington DC.
Dozens of people walked along the banks of the Potomac River near Reagan National airport, close to where an American Airlines jet and an army Black Hawk helicopter crashed into each other on Wednesday, killing all 67 onboard.
Although federal investigators are still working to piece together the events that led to the crash, the Washington DC fire chief, John Donnelly, said on Sunday evening that officials have positively identified 55 of the people who were killed. The army corps of engineers is surveying and preparing to begin significant salvage operations on Monday to remove the wreckage from the river.
The transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, toured the morning TV shows and said federal aviation investigators needed space to conduct their inquiry.
“What was happening inside the towers? Were they understaffed? … The position of the Black Hawk, the elevation of the Black Hawk, were the pilots of the Black Hawk wearing night vision goggles?” Duffy asked on CNN.
The American Airlines flight, with 64 people onboard was preparing to land from Wichita, Kansas. The army Black Hawk helicopter was on a training mission and had three soldiers on board. Both aircraft plunged to the Potomac River after colliding.
The plane’s passengers included figure skaters returning from the 2025 US figure skating championships in Wichita, Kansas, and a group of hunters returning from a guided trip.
Army staff sgt Ryan Austin O’Hara, 28, of Lilburn, Georgia; chief warrant officer 2 Andrew Loyd Eaves, 39, of Great Mills, Maryland; and Cpt Rebecca M Lobach, of Durham, North Carolina, were killed in the helicopter.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said on Saturday that preliminary data showed conflicting readings about the altitudes of the airliner and the army helicopter. Investigators also said that about a second before impact, the jet’s flight recorder showed a change in its pitch. But they did not say whether that change in angle meant that pilots were trying to perform an evasive maneuver to avoid the crash.
Data from the jet’s flight recorder showed its altitude as 325ft (99 meters), plus or minus 25ft (7.6 meters), when the crash happened, NTSB officials told reporters. Data in the control tower, though, showed the Black Hawk at 200ft (61 meters), the maximum allowed altitude for helicopters in the area.
The discrepancy has yet to be explained.
Investigators hope to reconcile the difference with data from the helicopter’s black box, which is taking more time to retrieve because it became waterlogged after the Black Hawk plunged into the Potomac. They also plan to refine the tower data, which can be less reliable.
Full NTSB investigations typically take at least a year, though investigators hope to have a preliminary report within 30 days.
On Fox News Sunday, Duffy said the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was looking into staffing in the Reagan Airport control tower.
Investigators said there were five controllers on duty at the time of the crash: a local controller, ground controller, assistant controller, a supervisor and supervisor in training.
According to an FAA report obtained by the Associated Press, one controller was responsible for helicopter and plane traffic. Those duties are often divided between two people but the airport typically combines them at 9.30pm, once traffic slows down. On Wednesday, the tower supervisor combined them earlier, which the report called “not normal”.
“Staffing shortages for air traffic control has been a major problem for years and years,” Duffy said, promising that President Donald Trump’s administration would address shortages with “bright, smart, brilliant people in towers controlling airspace”.
Wednesday’s crash was the deadliest in the US since 12 November 2001, when a jet slammed into a residential neighborhood in the New York City borough of Queens, just after takeoff from Kennedy airport. The crash killed all 260 people on board and five people on the ground.
Experts regularly highlight that plane travel is overwhelmingly safe, but the crowded airspace around Reagan National can challenge even the most experienced pilots.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
