ARLINGTON, Va. (AP) — Crews worked Tuesday to try to recover the plane’s cockpit and the rest of the remains of the 67 people who died in last week’s midair collision between a passenger jet and Army helicopter near the nation’s capital.
They said their work might depend upon the wind and tidal conditions in the Potomac River, where the aircraft crashed last Wednesday night after colliding as the American Airlines flight was about to land at nearby Ronald Reagan National Airport. All 67 people on both aircraft were killed.
By midday, they were working to raise another large piece of the plane. The National Transportation Safety Board said it didn’t plan to provide further updates from the scene.
Authorities have recovered and identified the remains of 55 of the 67 people and have said they are confident they will find all of the victims. They are focusing first on the jet and hope to recover the Black Hawk helicopter later this week.
Col. Francis B. Pera of the Army Corps of Engineers said salvage crews on Monday were able to pull one of the two jet engines from the river, along with large pieces of the plane’s exterior. They were also working to recover a wing of the plane, which had flown out of Wichita, Kansas.
Sixty passengers and four crew were on the American Airlines flight, including figure skaters returning from the 2025 U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Wichita.
The Black Hawk helicopter was on a training mission. Army Staff Sgt. Ryan Austin O’Hara, 28, of Lilburn, Georgia; Chief Warrant Officer 2 Andrew Loyd Eaves, 39, of Great Mills, Maryland; and Capt. Rebecca M. Lobach, of Durham, North Carolina, were aboard.
Federal investigators are trying to piece together the events that led to the collision. Full investigations typically take a year or more, but investigators hope to have a preliminary report within 30 days.
Wednesday’s crash was the deadliest in the U.S. since Nov. 12, 2001, when a jet slammed into a New York City neighborhood just after takeoff, killing all 260 people on board and five on the ground.
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Dale reported from Philadelphia.
