(4 Feb 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Potomac River, Virginia – 4 February 2025
1. Various of crane operating to remove debris from Potomac River
STORYLINE:
Salvage crews have recovered an engine and large pieces of fuselage, and are working to retrieve a wing from the wreckage of a commercial airliner involved in last week’s midair collision near Washington’s Reagan National Airport, officials said Monday.
They also recovered more human remains from the Potomac River, although they declined to offer specifics, reiterating only that 55 of the 67 victims have been found and identified since the crash Wednesday.
Authorities have said the operation to remove the plane will take several days and they will then work to remove the military helicopter involved. The crash between the American Airlines jet and an Army helicopter over Washington D.C. was the deadliest U.S. air disaster since 2001.
More than 300 responders were taking part in the recovery effort at any given time, officials said. Two Navy barges were also deployed to lift heavy wreckage.
Washington, D.C. Fire Department Assistant Chief Gary Steen told a news briefing that officials were confident all of the victims would be found.
Divers and salvage workers are adhering to strict protocols and stopped moving debris at times when human remains were being recovered, said U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Col. Francis Pera.
The “dignified recovery” of remains takes precedence over all else, he said.
Portions of the two aircraft that collided over the river Wednesday night near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport — an American Airlines jet with 64 people aboard and an Army Black Hawk helicopter with three aboard — are being loaded onto flatbed trucks and will be taken to a hangar for investigation. Crews hoped to recover the jet’s cockpit on Tuesday, Pera said.
The crash occurred when the jet, en route from Wichita, Kansas, was about to land. The Black Hawk was on a training mission. There were no survivors.
On Sunday, family members were taken in buses with a police escort to the Potomac River bank near where the two aircraft came to rest after colliding.
The plane’s passengers included figure skaters returning from the 2025 U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Wichita and a group of hunters returning from a guided trip.
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 in the helicopter.
Federal investigators were working to piece together the events that led to the collision. Full investigations typically take a year or more. 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.
Experts stress that plane travel is overwhelmingly safe, but the crowded airspace around Reagan Airport can challenge even experienced pilots.
The NTSB said Saturday that preliminary data showed conflicting readings about the altitudes of the airliner and the helicopter.
Investigators also said that about a second before impact, the jet’s flight recorder showed a change in its pitch. But they did not say whether that change in angle meant that pilots were trying to perform an evasive maneuver to avoid the crash.
The discrepancy has yet to be explained.
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