A pair of black boxes has been recovered from the American Airlines jet involved in a mid-air collision with a military helicopter near Washington D.C., which left no survivors.
American Eagle Flight 5342 was closing in on Ronald Reagan National Airport Wednesday night when a Black Hawk Army helicopter crossed directly into its path of travel at around 9 p.m., the Federal Aviation Administration said. The regional jetliner, flying 60 passengers and 4 crew back from Wichita, Kansas, broke into pieces upon impact, and then fell into the shallow, frigid waters of the Potomac River, officials said.
In the coming days, federal investigators will work to better understand what led to the brutal crash. While its cause has yet to be confirmed, authorities are hoping to gain some insight from the jetliner’s so-called black boxes, or flight data recorders, which collect information on communications involving pilots in cockpits and the in-flight performance of aircraft systems.
Despite the moniker, they’re typically bright orange, and they’re built to be virtually indestructible should a crash occur.
“Investigators have recovered the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder from the Bombardier CRJ700 airplane.” National Transportation Safety Board spokesperson Peter Knudson confirmed late Thursday. He added that both recorders have since “arrived at the NTSB labs for evaluation.”
In the days since the collision — likely to be the nation’s deadliest commercial plane crash since 2001 — President Trump has placed the blame on DEI policies, specifically an “FAA diversity push” that Trump claims “includes focus on hiring people with severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities.” He also declared that the collision “should have been prevented,” citing preliminary information indicating the chopper was headed “straight at the airplane” as it was preparing to land.
Trump in a post on Truth Social on Friday continued to speculate, suggesting the Black Hawk helicopter was “flying too high, by a lot” before the midair collision.
“It was far above the 200 foot limit,” he wrote. “That’s not really too complicated to understand, is it???”
Trump’s comments came as the New York Times reported the chopper may have been flying outside its approved flight path, at a higher altitude than it was supposed to be, and at least half a mile off the approved route.
What’s more, a preliminary report by the Federal Aviation Administration indicated that air traffic control staffing was “not normal” at the time of the crash. There were not two controllers in the air traffic control tower, leaving one person handling both planes and helicopters.
NTSB member Todd Inman said the military aircraft was also equipped “with some form of recording devices and those will be read either by DOD or by us.”
The helicopter was carrying three “fairly experienced” soldiers, who were conducting an “annual proficiency training flight” at the time of the collision. They were from the Bravo Company 12th Aviation Battalion at Fort Belvoir, an army base in Virginia that’s about 14 miles from the airport, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a post on X.
In total, officials believe 67 people were killed in the incident, including more than a dozen figure skaters on their way back from “a National Development Camp held in conjunction with the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Wichita, Kansas,” U.S. Figure Skating said in a statement.
As of Friday morning, more than 40 bodies have been recovered, officials said.
With News Wire Services
