The National Transportation Safety Board said all of the major pieces of the Black Hawk helicopter and American Airlines Flight 5342 that collided on Jan. 29 near Reagan National Airport have been recovered from the Potomac River.
The wreckage is now at a secure location at Reagan National Airport, where investigators are examining the items and documenting their findings.
“Investigators will be looking for witness marks on the aircraft that could provide clues to the angle of collision,” the agency said in a news release Saturday.
Determining the angle of the collision could help investigators determine if the helicopter crew had any knowledge the collision was imminent and if they could have taken evasive action.
As the airplane was on final approach to Runway 33 at Reagan National Airport, it was struck by the helicopter and fell into the icy cold waters of the Potomac River, killing all 64 people on the jet. There were 60 passengers and four crew members, including two pilots and two flight attendants. There were three crew members on the helicopter.
Investigators also recovered the jet’s Traffic Collision Avoidance System, or TCAS, and additional avionics have been found and secured from the helicopter.
Thursday on Capitol Hill, lawmakers were briefed on the status of the investigation, but according to CNN and other news reports, no new significant findings were disclosed.
NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said investigators are still trying to determine whether the helicopter had a significant aviation tracking system called ADS-B installed on the aircraft, and if it was installed, if it was operational at the time of the crash.
ADS-B allows pilots and air traffic controllers to see on a screen an aircraft’s location in real-time, altitude, positioning and relationship to other planes and helicopters. Whether the helicopter had ADS-B has become a key issue for some lawmakers.
“We believe there are avionics on that helicopter that we need to evaluate in order to determine what they did have and what was on at the time. More to come,” Homendy told reporters after her briefing.
“This was a training mission, so there was no compelling national security reason for ADS-B to be turned off,” Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee Chairman Ted Cruz, Republican from Texas said. That committee has oversight of the nation’s commercial airspace.
During Saturday’s recovery efforts by divers, they brought to the surface avionics equipment from the helicopter and once investigators begin inspection of those items, it is possible those clues will reveal answers to those questions.
Senate Committee member, Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth, a former decorated Army Black Hawk pilot in Iraq said she believed the Black Hawk did have an ADS-B system onboard.
“It’s not clear whether the technology was turned on, but the Army confirmed it was installed in the aircraft,” Duckworth said.
The Black Hawk, stationed at Fort Belvoir in Virginia, was conducting an annual proficiency training exercise in “government continuity” at the time of the collision, according to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. He noted the pilots were highly experienced and wearing night vision goggles during the flight.
Meanwhile, officials with the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration using radar and a manned aircraft, did a search of the floor of the Potomac and they identified multiple underwater targets that could be items from the aircraft.
The technology, called TopoBathy lidar, is designed to produce detailed underwater imagery and guide recovery teams.
The survey “identified multiple underwater targets that could be additional aircraft debris,” the NTSB said. “Divers investigated those targets today and will continue that work this week.”
As investigators continue their work at the airport and in the river, the Federal Aviation Administration has reduced the air traffic levels at Reagan National Airport, in part because the airport is using only one runway, the longest runway, 1 and 19, but also because of adverse weather conditions this past week in the D.C. area.
The airport’s hourly arrival rate decreased from 28 to 26 flights, causing average delays to rise from 40 to 50 minutes. Also, because of the crash, helicopter flights around the airport have been severely restricted.
Aviation officials have acknowledged that air traffic control issues, including staffing, are areas they are investigating.
In an interview with Fox News, Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said he is considering raising the current mandatory retirement age of 56 to an unspecified age as a way to have more controllers on duty. The FAA is authorized to have 14,345 controllers on staff, but currently it has 10,800.
“It takes two to three years to get a controller from being qualified conditionally just to enter the job, and there are multiple points where they can fail out of being an air traffic controller. Everything from academy to simulation training locally, and then eventually talking to aircraft on their own,” National Air Traffic Controllers Association President Nick Daniels said during a Feb. 1 CNN interview.
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