In the icy waters of the Potomac River, divers have recovered most of the dead from the wreckage of an American Airlines jet and Army helicopter that collided Wednesday, killing all 67 people.
Investigators are trying to learn why the Army Blackhawk helicopter apparently deviated from its approved flight path before the deadly crash, flying at nearly 350 feet when it should have been flying under 200 feet.
Friday morning, President Trump revealed in a post on Truth Social, “The Blackhawk helicopter was flying too high, by a lot. It was far above the 200 foot limit. That’s not really too complicated to understand, is it???”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters on Thursday, “The military does dangerous things. It does routine things on the regular basis. Tragically, last night, a mistake was made. There was some, some sort of an elevation issue that we have immediately begun investigating.”
Some experts believe neither the jet or the helicopter saw each other, calling it a “tragic sequence of events.” A helicopter pilot can be heard acknowledging the plane. Some experts think it was the wrong plane.
Understaffed in a Complex Airspace
The Federal Aviation Administration is also reporting the air traffic controller on duty was handling two different positions instead of one.
The National Transportation Safety Board has recovered the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder and is examining them.
Pilots have long worried that DC’s complex airspace could be a disaster waiting to happen, as retired Navy captain and former Navy helicopter pilot Todd Flannery explained on CBN’s Faith Nation.
“It’s just the density of the air traffic that’s here,” Flannery said, “making it a really difficult area to…I shouldn’t say difficult, just a very challenging area to operate where you always have to be paying attention to radio calls and be ready to maneuver your aircraft as directed by air traffic control.”
Victims Being Identified
U.S. Figure Skating says 14 athletes, including some of the “rising stars” of the sport were on the plane, alongside their coaches and family members.
Sixteen-year-old Spencer Lane was one of those skaters, traveling with his mom when the plane crashed.
Lane’s dad Doug says he didn’t know there was a problem until he saw the notification. “I was just like, ‘Oh my God.’ And my heart just started, like, exploding out of my chest. And I just started scrambling from there.”
Also killed were 12-year-old skater and cancer survivor Brielle Beyer with her mom Justyna. Dad Andy Beyer said of Brielle, “She just, she was just such a fighter in everything she did. And she just lived life to the fullest with everything. They were gone for six days before this happened. And, you know, I really miss them. I live my life for my family.”
Other victims included: Kiah Duggins who had been visiting her mom in her hometown of Wichita; Grace Maxwell, a junior at Cedarville University in Ohio, on her way back to school; Elizabeth Keys, who was traveling on her birthday; youth ice dance partners Angela Yang and Sean Kay; Roger and Stephanie Haynos and skater son Cory; and Russian figure skating coaches and former world champions Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov.
With the American Airlines plane having come from Wichita, Pastor Jon Morris at Vima Church in that city tells CBN News local residents are shocked and grieving.
“It’s just these kinds of things you never expected,” Morris said. “It’s always someone else, but then, when it’s you, it kind of just shakes you. I think a great prayer to pray is, ‘God, do what you can do. There’s things that I can’t do, but Holy Spirit, would you move? Would you bring comfort? Would you bring peace that goes beyond understanding? Would you move in a powerful way?'”
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