Estimated read time: minutes. Washington Fire Chief John Donnelly said officials are confident all persons will be found. Divers are working diligently to locate remains as crews prepare to lift wreckage from the chilly Potomac River as early as Monday morning, Donnelly said at a news conference. Francis B. Pera of the Army Corps of Engineers said divers and salvage workers are adhering to strict protocols and will stop moving debris if a body is found. The "dignified recovery" of remains takes precedence over all else, he said.
Divers have high-definition cameras with feeds monitored on support boats, Pera said, putting "four or five sets of eyes" inside of the wreckage. Owing to the frigid conditions, one diver was treated at a hospital for hypothermia, Donnelly said. Portions of the two aircraft that collided over the river Wednesday night near Reagan Washington National Airport — an American Airlines jet with 64 people aboard and an Army Black Hawk helicopter with three aboard — will be loaded onto flatbed trucks and taken to a hangar for investigation.
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 jet, en route from Wichita, Kansas, was about to land. The Black Hawk was on a training mission. There were no survivors from either aircraft. The National Transportation Safety Board didn't hold a press briefing on Sunday, but did release a photograph showing investigators on a small boat looking at wreckage and another of them examining a flight data recorder.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said he wanted to give investigators space to conduct their inquiry. But he posed a range of questions on Sunday morning TV news programs. Were they understaffed? Army Staff Sgt. Rebecca M. Lobach, of Durham, North Carolina, were in the helicopter. The plane's passengers included figure skaters returning from the U. Figure Skating Championships in Wichita and a group of hunters returning from a guided trip. The National Transportation Safety Board 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. Data from the jet's flight recorder showed its altitude as feet, plus or minus 25 feet, when the crash happened, safety board officials told reporters.
