Washington – How a Black Hawk helicopter of the military collided American airlines Jetliner continues to be unknown in a fatal crash on the Potomac River on Wednesday evening, but vital questions arise, including the quantity of the military helicopter.
Crash investigators have recovered and expanded a flight recorder from the H-60 helicopter Sikorsky, which might be combined by combing interviews with air traffic controls, including that on the time of the crash, and the 2 recorder from the aircraft, including the service , includes Todd Inman, board member of the National Transportation Safety, said on Friday.
The load barges are on the solution to raise the massive parts of the CRJ-700 on Saturday from the Potomac River, said Inman at a briefing.
All 64 people on the American flight 5342 and the three on board the helicopter were killed within the fireball collision near the Reagan National Airport by Washington and marked the fatal US air crash since 2001.
Fire and EMS boss John Donnelly said forty-one corpses at a press conference on Friday. 28 of those were identified positively.
“We have a so -called” Swiss cheese approach “in aviation, whereby a backup should catch it, several layers of redundancy,” said Inman. “It was a long time ago that we had a major aviation incident in the United States, and that's why it is one of the safest means of transport in the country.”
The PSA Airlines Bombardier CRJ-700 aircraft flew shortly before 9:00 p.m. ET on Wednesday when she collided with the Black Hawk helicopter.
PSA Airlines is certainly one of the subsidiaries American who flies regional routes, flights which might be marketed as American Eagle.
Defense Minister Pete Hegseth said that the helicopter was an annual flight training flight.
According to the principles of the Federal Aviation Administration, helicopters that repeatedly cross Washington between military bases, the Pentagon and other locations near the airport must fly a maximum of 200 feet.
“It is a kind of unique environment in DC,” said Inman at a briefing on Thursday. He noticed that there have been helicopter zones or tracks in Washington. “This changed as part of their normal procedure from lane one to four. If you live in DC, you can see many helicopters in this area. So there is a very precisely defined system.”
FAA will restrict helicopter traffic across the Reagan National Airport area, with some exceptions to medical evacuation and law enforcement authorities, transport minister, Minister of Transport Sean Duffy said on X Friday.
The airspace is some of the overloaded within the country and Reagan is national that its major street is probably the most busy within the USA
During the examination, two out of three landingways on the airport last attributable to their proximity to the crash area. Terry Liersckke, Vice President and Airport Manager, told the press on Friday that he would expect these closures to take about per week.
Officials on the airport said that greater than 100 flights were canceled on Friday, citing the Runway closings and the bad weather.
“If you look at the runway, your concentration is on the flight to get to the runway quickly and let the plane stop,” said John Cox, a retired airline pilot and advisor for flight safety.
The NTSB leads the examination of the collision that ended with a fireball. The agency said that information continues to be collecting and it was too early to attract conclusions.
“It's not that we have no information. We have information,” said Jennifer Homendy NTSB. “We have considerable information. We have to check information. We have to take the time to make sure that this is correct.”
The NTSB has also restored flight data and cockpit language recorder from the passenger jet. The boxes were delivered to the evaluation in NTSB Labs, said the agency.
President Donald Trump continued on Friday Truth social that the helicopter “flew too high. It was well above the 200 -foot border. This is not really too complicated to understand it, right ???”
Hegseth made an identical explanation in a briefing within the White House on Thursday.
“Tragically, a mistake was made last night,” he said. “There was a kind of survey problem that we immediately examined at the DOD and army level.”
Both statements were unusual after a crash and within the early phases of an accident examination.
The accident ends within the United States and a half many years of air safety, during which no fatal industrial crash has been recorded since 2009, although passenger traffic has increased by greater than 35% on records. This crash prompted a wide range of stricter pilot training and resting standards.
The lack of air traffic controllers has been a priority for years, and a flood of close calls to US airports has checked control by legislators and supervisory authorities.
According to a preliminary FAA security report on the collision, NBC News reported NBC News on Thursday not normal at Reagan National on the night of the crash for traffic and the time of day through the night of the crash.
NBC quotes a source and said that the airport tower often has a controller that focuses on helicopter traffic, although the FAA guidelines enable this position to be combined with the position of one other controller in order that a controller controls each aircraft and helicopter. The FAA didn’t reply to a request for comments on the report.
NBC News reported on Friday and quoted a source acquainted with the investigation that a supervisor within the Reagan National Tower left a controller left his shift early.
Inman said on Friday that the investigators will look back on the air traffic controller within the last 72 hours and even weeks.
“We will have your training, your attitude, everything you probably eaten that day,” he said. “But it's not a point that tells us everything. It is overlaid in many other information that is very critical.”
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