It has been officially confirmed that there were no survivors in the midair crash involving an Army helicopter and an American Airlines jet, flight 5342, which both plunged into the Potomac River in Washington DC, after collision Wednesday night.
The ill-fated American Airlines jet had 60 passengers (including members of a national skating team) and four crew members on board when it collided with the Army helicopter in its final approach to the Reagan Washington National Airport.
The helicopter, a US Army Black Hawk Helicopter, was on a routine training flight when the disaster occurred.
As reported by the New York Times, authorities confirmed, Thursday, that all 67 people involved in the tragic crash in the DC area perished in the disaster. The dead included all three officers in the military helicopter.
As at Thursday, 28 bodies had been recovered from the icy Potomac, and preliminary Federal Aviation Administration report said staffing at the air traffic control tower was “not normal” when the crash happened.
The New York Times cited an internal report which indicated that the controller on duty in the night of the accident was doing a job usually handled by two people.
According to the report, the controller who was handling helicopters in the airport’s vicinity on Wednesday night was also instructing planes that were landing and departing from its runways — jobs typically assigned to two different controllers.
Though investigators, sometimes carrying debris, were see coming and going for hours by boat from Gravelly Point Park near the airport, the newspaper reported, several emergency vehicles have left as night fell and there were no indications that they would come back to work through the night.
Several news outlets reported that one of the two black boxes in the two ill-fated aircraft and helicopter had been recovered, and once the second flight recorder was found, both would be sent to the NTSB for analysis.
Though things are unravelling rapidly, it may take up to thirty days before the world would have the full picture of what happened Wednesday night.
Undoubtedly, the tragedy has plunged America into deep mourning, with many wondering why and how did it happen. Most people believe that it was a “completely avoidable” tragedy.
While experts have repeatedly cautioned politicians against jumping into conclusions as the investigation was getting underway, American President, Donald Trump, without facts, has blamed the tragedy on Democrats and diversity.
The ABC News reported that President Donald Trump, on Thursday, claimed, without citing evidence, that diversity, equity and inclusion for air traffic controllers at the Federal Aviation Administration — under Democratic presidents — were partly to blame for the tragic plane and helicopter collision in Washington on Wednesday night.
“I put safety first, Obama, Biden and the Democrats put policy first, and they put politics at a level that nobody’s ever seen,” Trump told reporters in the White House briefing room, referring to the policies.
Wednesday’s air disaster was the first major commercial airline crash in the United States since 2009, when 50 people died perished after a plane crashed while landing near Buffalo Niagara International Airport.
