This US Coast Guard photo shows the Coast Guard investigating aircraft wreckage on the Potomac River on 30 January, 2025 in Washington, DC. Photo: HANDOUT / AFP
By Kaanita Iyer and Zoe Sottile, CNN
The American Airlines flight involved in the deadly collision with a Black Hawk helicopter over Washington, DC, seemed to increase its pitch just before the impact, preliminary data from a data recorder recovered from the plane shows.
"At one point very close to the impact, there was a slight change in pitch, an increase in pitch," National Transportation Safety Board member Todd Inman said at a Saturday evening news conference. "That is something that we will get you more detail on."
The finding is one of the first pieces of information that have emerged as the NTSB works to investigate the disaster in which 67 people are thought to have been killed. The Black Hawk helicopter was training to evacuate government officials in the event of a catastrophe when the collision with the passenger jet occurred.
The agency is still working to transcribe the entirety of the audio from voice recorders, Brice Banning, the NTSB investigator-in-charge, said.
Preliminary findings announced at the news conference indicate the helicopter may have been flying above the altitude allowed in the corridor. Initial data shows the American Airlines regional plane was flying at around 325 feet, plus or minus 25 feet, at the time of the impact, according to Inman.
But the data available to the air traffic controllers showed the helicopter was at 200 feet near the time of the accident, Inman said, an unexplained discrepancy that will need further investigation.
If the impact did take place at 325 feet, it would have been well above the 200-feet limit to which helicopters are restricted in the corridor. The helicopter was using specialized corridors for law enforcement, medevac, military and government helicopters in the Washington area. Federal Aviation Administration charts show - and the NTSB confirmed - helicopters in the corridor must be at or below 200 feet above sea level.
Inman noted that investigators "currently don't have the readout from the Black Hawk" so they cannot provide information about what altitude the helicopter was flying at. But "obviously an impact occurred, and I would say when an impact occurs, that is typically where the altitude of both aircraft were at the moment," he said.
Flight tracking data from the moments before the fatal midair collision appear to show the helicopter flying 100 feet above its allowed altitude, and veering off the prescribed route along the Potomac River's east side.
President Trump has said the helicopter was "flying too high, by a lot". Photo: Handout / Getty Images / AFP
Both President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have raised the issue of altitude.
"The Blackhawk helicopter was flying too high, by a lot. It was far above the 200 foot limit," Trump said in a Truth Social post Friday.
"Someone was at the wrong altitude," Hegseth told Fox News on Friday morning. "Was the Black Hawk too high? Was it on course? Right now, we don't quite know."
The helicopter's black box voice recorder has also been recovered with no signs of exterior damage, according to Inman.
The NTSB has begun interviewing air traffic control personnel, which will continue for a few days, Inman said.
The slight increase in pitch could show the pilots trying to pull the plane up after suddenly noticing the helicopter, Mary Schiavo, former inspector general at the Department of Transportation, told CNN Saturday.
"That tells us that they did not see the helicopter until just, you know, a second at impact," Schiavo said. "But they had that one second to try to pull up."
The discrepancy between the plane's altitude and the helicopter altitude as reported by the air traffic controllers "is going to be the source of a lot of investigation," Schiavo added.
Helicopter on training flight for emergencies
At the time of the collision, the Black Hawk military helicopter was training to evacuate government officials in the case of a catastrophic event.
The pilots were training for a scenario when "something really bad happens in this area, and we need to move our senior leaders," Jonathan Koziol, chief of staff for the Army's aviation directorate, told reporters on Thursday.
That evacuation would be part of what Hegseth described as "a continuity of government mission."
To carry out such an evacuation, Koziol added, pilots "do need to be able to understand the environment, the air traffic, the routes, to ensure the safe travel of our senior leaders throughout our government."
Those who were killed included three Army aviators in the Black Hawk: Capt. Rebecca Lobach, 28, who was identified Saturday; Staff Sgt. Ryan Austin O'Hara, 28; and Chief Warrant Officer 2 Andrew Lloyd Eaves, 39. While the Army released the names of the other two soldiers on board the Black Hawk on Friday, Lobach's name had been withheld at her family's request.
Pilots who fly with the 12th Aviation Battalion, based out of Fort Belvoir, Virginia, frequently fly along the Potomac River and past DC's Reagan National Airport for various missions - often carrying general officers or Army leaders to and from the Pentagon, or other VIPs elsewhere in the Northeast.
Brad Bowman, a former Black Hawk pilot and member of the 12th Aviation Battalion who served on September 11, 2001, told CNN that on the route past Reagan, the helicopters drop down to their lowest altitude of the entire flight, with the intention of getting low to "deconflict with aircraft at Reagan."
"(T)he low level helicopter routes have been in operation for decades - that area is one of the busiest aviation operation centers in the country, if not the world," said Bowman, who is also a senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. "It is a concert or orchestra of activity that requires careful communication and cooperation between pilots and Reagan tower."
"Everyone has to be on their game and follow instruction exactly," Bowman added.
Meanwhile, reports have emerged that may show the tragedy is part of a larger problem. In the three years before the disaster, at least two other pilots near misses collisions with helicopters while landing at Reagan National Airport.
For years, Sen. Tim Kaine has been a vocal critic of congestion at the airport, warning it was only a matter of time before there was a deadly collision.
"We got to get to the bottom of this crash and then take necessary steps to keep people safe," the Virginia Democrat told CNN's Jake Tapper on "State of the Union."
The inadequate staffing at the Reagan airport tower was also hardly an anomaly. Airports around the country have struggled with controller staffing levels for years, according to a CNN review of government data and interviews with aviation experts.
The Trump administration is working with the Federal Aviation Administration to increase staffing levels of air traffic controllers, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Sunday.
"We're going to surge air traffic controllers. We're going to bring in the best and the brightest," Duffy told Tapper on Sunday.
But the yearslong training process for certified air traffic controllers means the increase in staffing won't happen overnight, Duffy said.
Historic disaster
The midair collision between the Army Black Hawk helicopter and American Eagle Flight 5342 near DC's Reagan National Airport marks the deadliest aviation disaster in the US since 2001.
Crews are still working to recover the wreckage of the aircraft and bodies of the victims from the Potomac River. The victims include a number of young figure skaters returning from a development camp in Kansas, as well as three soldiers who were aboard the Black Hawk.
The NTSB is investigating the devastating crash and will take about 30 days to release a preliminary report. A final report, which will determine a probable cause, will take much longer, the board said.
Forty-two bodies have been recovered from the scene of the wreckage of the deadly midair collision over the Potomac River, authorities said Saturday.
"Rescue crews have recovered 42 sets of remains and 38 have been positively identified by the DC Office of the Chief Medical Examiner," Unified Command said in a statement Saturday afternoon.
The Black Hawk helicopter, while briefly stabilized to assist with recovery efforts, remains in the water, authorities said.
"Today, salvage crews from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Navy's Supervisor of Salvage and Diving are assessing the area and preparing for the recovery of the aircraft," a statement from emergency services reads.
"Divers from the salvage company are surveying the wreckage throughout the day. Additional barges and equipment are expected to arrive later this afternoon. No wreckage is expected to be removed on Saturday," the statement continued.
DC Fire and EMS Chief John Donnelly Sr. previously said he believed it was necessary to remove the fuselage of the plane from the water in order to recover all the bodies.
Asked on Friday if authorities are confident they know where the remaining bodies are, Donnelly said, "we think we know where they are," but "we won't know until we're done."
- CNN
