Black boxes being evaluated, search efforts continue Friday after midair collision near DC

A midair collision between an Army helicopter and an American Airlines flight killed all 67 people aboard the two aircraft, officials said Thursday, as they scrutinized the actions of the military pilot and reported that control tower staffing was “not normal” at the time of the country’s worst aviation disaster in a generation. At least 28 bodies were pulled from the icy waters of the Potomac River after the helicopter apparently flew into the path of the American Airlines regional jet late Wednesday while it was landing at Ronald Reagan National Airport, just across the river from Washington, officials said Thursday. The plane carried 60 passengers and four crew members, and three soldiers were aboard the helicopter. President Donald Trump told a White House news conference Thursday that no one survived.“We are now at the point where we are switching from a rescue operation to a recovery operation,” said John Donnelly, the fire chief in the nation’s capital. The plane was found upside-down in three sections in waist-deep water, and first responders were searching an area of the Potomac River as far south as the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, roughly 3 miles south of the airport, Donnelly said. The helicopter wreckage was also found. Images from the river showed boats around the partly submerged wing and the mangled wreckage of the plane’s fuselage. National Transportation Safety Board spokesperson Peter Knudson confirmed that “NTSB investigators recovered the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder from the Bombardier CRJ700 airplane involved in yesterday’s midair collision at DCA.” Knudson said the recorders, which are commonly known as black boxes, are “at the NTSB labs for evaluation.” The devices record both cockpit conversations and a slew of data points from the avionics and will be key as the NTSB begins its investigation. The NTSB must also sift through a “very large package of information” provided by the FAA, said NTSB board member J. Todd Inman.What we know:A passenger jet collided with an Army helicopter at Ronald Reagan National Airport around 8:48 p.m. WednesdayThere were 60 passengers and four crew members on board the plane.The Army helicopter that collided with the jet was on a training flight. There were three soldiers on board.Officials say no one on either the plane or helicopter survived.Passengers on the flight included a group of figure skaters, their coaches and family members, according to U.S. Figure Skating.The flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder from the American Airlines plane were recovered.Crews were still searching for other casualties but did not believe there were any survivors.Video below: Search and rescue crews recover bodies after mid-air collision near Washington, D.C.Three soldiers were aboard the Army Blackhawk helicopter, and their bodies have been recovered, according to U.S. officials. Two of the soldiers involved in the crash have been identified: Ryan O’Hara, the crew chief onboard the helicopter, and Andrew Eaves, one of the pilots.The crew that was flying the helicopter was “very experienced” and were not new to the unit or the congested flying that occurs daily around Washington, D.C., according to Jonathan Koziol, chief of staff for Army aviation.“Both pilots had flown this specific route before, at night. This wasn’t something new to either one of them,” Koziol said. “Even the crew chief in the back has been in the unit for a very long time, very familiar with the area, very familiar with the routing structure.” One air traffic controller was doing work normally assigned to two people in the tower at Reagan National when the collision happened, according to a report by the Federal Aviation Administration obtained by The Associated Press.“The position configuration was not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic,” the report said.The report did not determine if staffing played a role in the crash.Related video below: FAA report reveals staffing issues during Potomac mid-air collisionThere was no immediate word on the cause of the collision, but officials said flight conditions were clear as the jet arrived from Wichita, Kansas.National Transportation Safety Board Chair Jennifer Homendy said Thursday at a press conference, “We look at facts on our investigation and that will take some time.” She was responding to a question on speculation about the cause of the crash. Homendy said the black boxes from the aircraft have not yet been recovered.Video below: NTSB holds press conference on plane crash“As one nation, we grieve for every precious soul that has been taken from us so suddenly,” Trump said at the news briefing Thursday. The Federal Aviation Administration said the midair crash occurred around 8:48 p.m. EST and it occurred in some of the most tightly controlled and monitored airspace in the world, just over three miles south of the White House and the Capitol. “On final approach into Reagan National, it collided with a military aircraft on an otherwise normal approach,” American Airlines CEO Robert Isom said. “At this time, we don’t know why the military aircraft came into the path of the … aircraft.” Images from the river showed boats around the partly submerged wing and the mangled wreckage of the plane’s fuselage.Video below: Witness describes seeing DC plane and helicopter collisionInvestigators will try to piece together the aircrafts’ final moments before their collision, including contact with air traffic controllers as well as a loss of altitude by the passenger jet. Inside Reagan National Airport, the mood was somber Thursday as stranded passengers waited for flights to resume, sidestepping camera crews and staring out the terminal’s windows at the Potomac, where recovery efforts were barely visible in the distance.Aster Andemicael had been at the airport since Wednesday evening with her elderly father, who was flying to Indiana to visit family. She spent much of the long night thinking about the victims and their families.“I’ve been crying since yesterday,” she said, her voice cracking. “This is devastating.”Flights resumed at the airport around midday.Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said, who was sworn in earlier this week, was asked if he could reassure Americans that the United States still has the safest airspace in the world.“Can I guarantee the American flying public that the United States has the most safe and secure airspace in the world? And the answer to that is, absolutely yes, we do,” he said.Video below: Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says, ‘We will get to the bottom of this investigation as quickly as possible’Young athletes among the victims Passengers on the flight included a group of figure skaters, their coaches and family members who were returning from a development camp that followed the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Wichita.Doug Zeghibe, CEO and executive director of the Skating Club of Boston in Norwood, Massachusetts, said 14 members of the U.S. Figure Skating team, six of whom are affiliated with the club, were on the plane. Skater Spencer Lane, and his mother, Christine, skater Jinna Han, and her mother, Jin, and coaches Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov were aboard the plane.Shishkova and Naumov won the pairs title at the 1994 World Championships and competed at the Winter Olympics twice. Their son, Maxim Naumov, who was not on the plane, is a competitive figure skater for the U.S. “I think for all of us, we have lost family,” Zeghibe said.Alexandr “Sasha” Kirsanov, Sean Kay, and Angela Yang, all from Delaware, also died in the D.C. plane crash, U.S. Sen. Chris Coons said.The group, which included youth skaters, was returning from the National Development Camp, which took place after the U.S. Championships in Kansas, and was scheduled to board a connecting from Reagan to Boston on Wednesday night.Skating organizations in Philadelphia and the Washington area also said some of their young athletes had been aboard the plane. In Virginia’s Loudoun County, a coach at a skating club was also identified as among the passengers, Virginia Rep. Suhas Subramanyam confirmed. The club, Ashburn Ice House, said that its “figure skating community has been directly affected,” but did not give further details.Warning: Viewer discretion is advised. Video below shows plane collide with helicopter over Potomac River. Some other passengers identified by family, other sourcesFirst Officer Samuel Lilley and Captain Jonathan Campos were identified as the plane’s pilots. Ian Epstein has been identified as one of the flight attendants.Other passengers on the plane identified so far are Elizabeth Anne Keys, Wendy Jo Shaffer and Grace Maxwell.The Chinese Embassy in the U.S. said on Thursday that according to “preliminary information,” two Chinese citizens were among the victims of the midair collision, Xinhua, China’s state news agency, reported.Additionally, an elderly man born in Argentina and his son, also an adult and originally from Chile, were on the plane, a source told CNN.Hunters who were headed home from a tripSeven people returning from a guided hunting trip in Kansas were killed, according to a Facebook post by Fowl Plains, the guide service, according to reports from the Associated Press.The Fowl Plains team said they had grown close to the hunters on board the flight over the years and considered them to be family members. The post doesn’t identify the hunters by name, but it says they had spent the past week on a guided hunt, “laughing, talking about our families and sharing memories.”“Heartbroken is an understatement,” the company said.Members of a Maryland union were onboard the planeThose killed also included four steamfitters, all members of a United Association union local in suburban Maryland, union leaders said in a social media post Thursday.“Our focus now is on providing support and care to the families of our Brothers as we continue to gather more information in the coming days,” said the post by UA General President Mark McManus and Chris Madello, the business manager of Local 602.Search and recovery mission underwayDonnelly said an alert was called for a large regional response for a plane crash. The first units arrived at the scene about 10 minutes later and began rescue operations. He said approximately 300 first responders are working in a search-and-recovery operation, and that they dealt with extremely rough and cold conditions.Inflatable rescue boats were launched into the Potomac River from a point along the George Washington Parkway, just north of the airport, and first responders set up light towers from the shore to illuminate the area near the collision site. At least a half-dozen boats were scanning the water using searchlights. In a statement, American Airlines said those who believe they may have loved ones on board Flight 5342 can call American Airlines toll-free at 800-679-8215. Those calling from outside the U.S. can visit news.aa.com for additional phone numbers. Family members in Canada, Puerto Rico or the U.S. Virgin Islands can call 800-679-8215 directly. Rescued efforts continued Thursday and were suspended in the late evening until Friday morning.Video below: Watch as crews remove debris from Potomac River after plane, helicopter crashLeading up to tragedyInvestigators will try to piece together the aircrafts’ final moments before their collision, including contact with air traffic controllers as well as a loss of altitude by the passenger jet.A few minutes before landing, air traffic controllers asked the arriving commercial jet if it could land on the shorter Runway 33 at Reagan National, and the pilots said they were able. Controllers then cleared the plane to land on Runway 33. Flight tracking sites showed the plane adjust its approach to the new runway.Less than 30 seconds before the crash, an air traffic controller asked the helicopter if it had the arriving plane in sight. The controller made another radio call to the helicopter moments later: “PAT 25 pass behind the CRJ.” Seconds after that, the two aircrafts collided.The plane’s radio transponder stopped transmitting about 2,400 feet short of the runway, roughly over the middle of the river. Video above: Reviewing flight tracking and control tower audio in the Washington, DC plane and helicopter collisionThe Hearst Television National Investigative Unit reviewed the final approach of the American Airlines plane, noting that it was east of common flight paths and the runway, crossing over the Potomac River, which often has heavy military and law enforcement helicopter traffic at all hours.The Investigative Unit also found that at its last tracking point, the plane was at an altitude of less than 300 feet, going 128 miles per hour.The collision occurred on a warm winter evening in Washington, with temperatures registering as high as 60 degrees Fahrenheit, following a stretch days earlier of intense cold and ice. On Wednesday, the Potomac River was 36 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The National Weather Service reported that wind gusts of up to 25 mph were possible in the area throughout the evening. White House responds “Sadly, there are no survivors” of the crash, President Donald Trump said.Trump said it was still unclear what caused the crash. He said the U.S. military and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating.“We’ll find out how this disaster occurred and will ensure that nothing like this ever happens again,” he said.During the news conference at the White House, Trump suggested without evidence that the Federal Aviation Administration’s diversity efforts had made air travel less safe.The president asserted his opinion even though the crash has yet to be fully investigated, and there has been no determination as to whether the FAA made any errors in relation to the crash.During the news conference, Trump also named Christopher Rocheleau as acting commissioner to the FAA. Authorities have ‘early indicators’ of what went wrongThe night was clear, the plane and helicopter were both in standard flight patterns and there was standard communication between the aircraft and the tower, Duffy said.”We have early indicators of what happened here,” Duffy said, though he declined to elaborate further pending an investigation.It was not unusual to have a military aircraft flying the river and an aircraft landing at the airport, he said. Asked if the plane was aware that there was a helicopter in the area, Duffy said he would say that the helicopter was aware that there was a plane in the area.Asked about Trump suggesting in an overnight social media post that the collision could have been prevented, Duffy said, “From what I’ve seen so far, do I think this was preventable? Absolutely.” Deadliest plane crash since November 2001The collision was the deadliest U.S. air crash since Nov. 12, 2001, when an American Airlines flight just after takeoff crashed into a residential area of Belle Harbor, New York, killing all 260 people aboard.The last major fatal crash involving a U.S. commercial airline occurred in 2009 near Buffalo, New York. Everyone aboard the Bombardier DHC-8 propeller plane was killed, including 45 passengers, two pilots and two flight attendants. Another person on the ground also died, bringing the total death toll to 50. An investigation determined that the captain accidentally caused the plane to stall as it approached the airport in Buffalo. Located along the Potomac River, just southwest of the city. Reagan National is a popular choice because it’s much closer than the larger Dulles International Airport, which is deeper in Virginia. The incident recalled the crash of an Air Florida flight that plummeted into the Potomac on Jan. 13, 1982, that killed 78 people. That crash was attributed to bad weather. Tragedy stuns WichitaThe crash devastated Wichita, the Kansas city that prides itself on being in America’s heartland. It hosted the figure skating championships this year for the first time.The city has been a major hub for the aircraft industry since the early days of commercial flight, and it is home to the U.S. headquarters for Bombardier, which manufactured the jetliner. So many regional workers have jobs tied to the industry that the area economy slumps when sales dip.After the crash, several hundred people gathered in the city council chambers for a prayer vigil led by Mayor Lily Wu and religious leaders.Carla Lee, a retired Wichita State University nursing professor, brought a vase of red roses. She is set to go to Washington next week for a conference, taking the same flight.“It hits you, how short life can be,” she said.The Associated Press and CNN contributed to this report.