What we know about American Airlines plane crash in Washington DC

Sixty-seven people are believed to have died after a passenger plane hit a military helicopter in mid-air near Washington DC’s Ronald Reagan airport on Wednesday evening.

It is not clear what caused the crash. Some experts have questioned whether the helicopter was flying above the permitted altitude at the time of the collision, and flight data appears to show that it was. But an investigation is continuing to determine what went wrong.

Authorities have recovered the flight data recorders from the American Airlines jet, and continue to find bodies in the icy Potomac River where the plane fell.

The plane, a Bombardier CRJ700, had travelled from Wichita, Kansas. It was operating as American Airlines flight 5342.

The US Army helicopter was a Sikorsky H-60 Black Hawk that took off from Fort Belvoir in Virginia, and belonged to B Company, 12th Aviation Battalion.

The helicopter appears to have been flying above the permitted altitude, according to analysis by the BBC’s US partner, CBS News.

Recordings of air traffic control conversations published online suggested that a controller tried to warn the helicopter about the American Airlines plane in the seconds before the collision.

The helicopter pilot appeared to respond to confirm they were aware of the plane, but moments later the two aircraft hit each other. Transport Secretary Sean Duffy also said he thought the helicopter was aware of the plane nearby.

Joining Duffy at a briefing on Thursday, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth added that the helicopter was on an annual proficiency flight, performing a night evaluation – and the crew had night-vision goggles.

The collision happened at about 21:00 local time (02:00 GMT), as the plane approached Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

One eyewitness, Ari Schulman, told NBC Washington that the plane’s approach looked normal, until he saw it bank hard to the right, with “streams of sparks” running underneath the craft, illuminating its belly, which he believed to look “very, very wrong”.

Another eyewitness, Jimmy Mazeo, recalled seeing what looked like a “white flare” in the sky. He remarked that planes approaching the airport appeared to have been flying in “irregular patterns”.

After the impact, the passenger plane broke into multiple pieces and sank several feet into the river, while the helicopter ended up upside down on the water.

Hundreds of first responders on rubber boats were deployed to search for survivors. Officials highlighted the challenging conditions in which they were working due to ice floating on the freezing-cold river, and contending with the plane wreckage.

They later said they did not expect to find any survivors and had changed the focus of their mission to focus on recovering bodies.

Details are emerging about the 64 people who were on board the plane, who included top figure skaters, as well as four crew members. Meanwhile, the helicopter was carrying three soldiers.

The latest official update says 28 bodies have been recovered from the scene so far. The BBC’s US news partner CBS reports that number is closer to 40.

The people known to have been on the flight include the skaters, a young pilot, flight attendants, and a lawyer travelling home on her birthday.

They comprise a range of nationalities – and several of them have been identified by family members and organisations.

Among the skaters were six people linked to a club in Boston. They were two teenagers, their mothers, and two Russian coaches, Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, who were former world champions in their sport, the club said.

The plane’s captain Jonathan Campos was named by his aunt, who told the New York Times that flying planes had been her nephew’s lifelong dream.

Ryan O’Hara was the crew chief of the helicopter, according to CBS.

It remains unclear what caused the crash. Officials have retrieved from the jet the data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder – known as the black boxes – and will look into possible contributing factors, including human error.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) began its first full day of investigation on Thursday and intends to release a preliminary report in 30 days.

Hegseth has said he expected the investigation to establish whether the helicopter was flying in the right corridor and altitude.

NTSB officials said on Thursday that the helicopter appeared to move from one corridor into another in a standard manoeuvre.

As the official probe continues, the New York Times has reported that the air traffic control staffing was “not normal” at the time – citing a preliminary Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) report.

Normally two people manage helicopters and airplanes flying in the area, but only one person was reportedly doing so at the time of the crash, the NYT and CBS reported.

It has also been reported by the Washington Post and CNN that just 24 hours before the deadly crash, another jet had to abort its landing at the airport after a helicopter came close to its flight path.

President Trump said on Friday that the Black Hawk helicopter was flying too high “by a lot”.

“It was far above the 200ft limit. That’s not really too complicated to understand, is it???” he said.

The helicopter does appear to have been flying above the limit, according to publicly available flight data analysed by CBS News.

Data from FlightRadar24 showed the helicopter’s last estimated altitude was about 400ft when it crashed. “Why is it on this day, on that flight, they were [as much as] 150 to 200ft higher than they knew they should be?” Greg Feith, a former senior air safety investigator told CBS.

“The investigation will help us understand that,” Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said. “Was the Black Hawk too high? Was it on course? Right now, we don’t quite know.”

Trump said earlier the country was in mourning, before going on to take a swipe at his political foes.

He speculated, without giving evidence, that lowered standards of hiring for air traffic controllers in the FAA during the Joe Biden and Barack Obama presidencies may have been a factor in the disaster.

Trump said he and his team had “strong opinions and ideas” about what had happened, but acknowledged that the investigation was at an early stage.

He also announced he was appointing Chris Rocheleau as the temporary head of the FAA. The top job there, as well as the positions of administrator and deputy administrator, have been vacant since Trump took office.

Major incidents of this kind are relatively rare in the US. The most recent comparable crash was in 2009, according to a list compiled by Reuters.

That year, an aircraft crashed on approach to landing in Buffalo, New York, killing all 49 people on board and one person on the ground.

The airspace above Washington DC is both busy and highly controlled. It is used by domestic and international traffic using two airports, and there are extra factors of presidential flights, heavy military traffic and flights around the Pentagon.

Passenger airliners must follow fixed flight plans, said the BBC’s transport correspondent Sean Dilley. Unlike in uncontrolled airspace, military pilots operate under strict instruction of air traffic controllers. But unlike their civilian counterparts, they have freedom to deviate and a duty to “see and avoid” other aircraft.