Washington, D. Fire and EMS Chief John Donnelly said at a news conference that divers still need to find the bodies of 12 more victims and are committed to the dignified recovery of remains as they prepare to lift wreckage from the Potomac River as early as Monday morning.
Pera of the Army Corps of Engineers. Portions of the aircraft will be loaded onto flatbed trucks and taken to a hangar for further investigation. They spoke hours after families of the victims visited the crash site just outside Washington, D. Dozens of people arrived in buses with a police escort close to where an American Airlines jet and an Army Black Hawk helicopter collided Wednesday, killing all 67 aboard the two aircraft.
Federal investigators were working to piece together the events that led to the crash while recovery crews were set to pull more wreckage from the chilly water. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on Sunday said he wanted to leave federal aviation investigators space to conduct their inquiry.
But he posed a range of questions about the crash while appearing on morning TV news programs. Were they understaffed? The position of the Black Hawk, the elevation of the Black Hawk, were the pilots of the Black Hawk wearing night vision goggles? The American Airlines flight with 64 people on board was preparing to land from Wichita, Kansas. The Army Black Hawk helicopter was on a training mission and had three soldiers on board.
Both aircraft plunged into the Potomac River after colliding. The plane's passengers included figure skaters returning from the U. Figure Skating Championships in Wichita, Kansas, and a group of hunters returning from a guided trip. Army Staff Sgt. Rebecca M. Lobach, of Durham, North Carolina, were killed in the helicopter. The National Transportation Safety Board said Saturday that preliminary data showed conflicting readings about the altitudes of the airliner and the Army helicopter.
