Investigators seek clues in deadly aircraft collision as divers return to frigid river to recover wreckage and remains
By Wednesday, inclement weather will bear down on Washington, with snow, sleet and freezing rain expected to worsen already tough conditions for recovery personnel.
A crane retrieves a piece of wreckage Monday from the Potomac River in the aftermath of the collision of American Eagle flight 5342 and a Black Hawk helicopter that crashed into the river. (Photo credit: Nathan Howard/Reuters via CNN Newsource)
(CNN) — Crews in Washington, DC, working at the site of the deadliest aviation disaster in a generation are balancing two important missions: extracting parts of two aircraft that crashed and fell into the Potomac and searching for remains of victims within the wreckage, which is the searchers’ priority.
Officials have so far identified 55 of the 67 victims and said they would likely recover the American Airlines cockpit by Tuesday, wind gusts and tidal levels permitting.
Data from the military helicopter’s black box was set to be released at a news conference Monday, the National Transportation Safety Board leader told Fox News, but the news conference was never scheduled.
As a salvage team continues to work in cold winter conditions to lift debris from the frigid water, key questions into the cause of the fatal collision remain –– though answers may not be immediately clear for weeks.
Former director of the FAA’s Office of Accident Investigation Steven Wallace said however, he’s confident the cause of the disaster will eventually be unambiguous.
“We have radar data, we have eyewitnesses, and we have all the wreckage,” Wallace told CNN’s Phil Mattingly. “There’s nothing missing.”
By Wednesday, inclement weather will bear down on Washington, with snow, sleet and freezing rain expected to worsen already tough conditions for recovery personnel.
Crews pull up a part of a plane from the Potomac River near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport Monday in Arlington, Virginia. (Photo credit: Jose Luis Magana/AP via CNN Newsource)
An arduous and slow recovery mission
The mangled wreckage in the Potomac River has made the recovery effort especially difficult for dive teams, who have struggled to access parts of the plane’s fuselage where bodies may be trapped.
These sections will need to be removed to retrieve the remaining bodies, DC Fire and EMS Chief John Donnelly said.
Divers have been using specialized underwater hydraulic rescue tools capable of cutting metal to try to reach as many victims as possible, but heavier salvage equipment is required to get jet parts out of the way and out of the water.
The recovery effort has been extensive, involving nearly every dive team in the area, including the US Coast Guard, the FBI’s Washington Field Office dive team, DC Fire and the International Association of Fire Fighters.
A new phase of recovery began Monday after divers spent the weekend getting a view of the underwater debris to map out a plan to recover the jet wreckage.
The NTSB on Monday said the agency is working to get the airplane –– a Bombardier CRJ700 regional jet –– out first, before the helicopter, a Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk, which will take four days longer.
But Monday’s work was painstaking and slow.
A jet engine was the first to be lifted from the frigid water, slowly raised by a crane. Video taken from shore showed salvage workers guiding it gently to the deck of a barge. From a distance, most of the engine’s cowling and exhaust nozzle appeared intact.
Two hours later, a second piece of the plane was pulled out –– a jagged portion of the fuselage not immediately identifiable.
Dean Naujoks, the Potomac Riverkeeper for the past 10 years, was granted access to the site of the crash to help investigators search for debris, according to CNN affiliate WRAL.
Naujoks recovered a window panel, a seat, insulation, an airplane manual and a bag of sugar packets. Everything was covered in jet fuel, he said.
“It was just the saddest day I’ve ever been on the river,” Naujoks told WRAL. “My heart goes out to all the families of the victims.”
Airplane flight data recorder and helicopter black box reveal new clues
An analysis of the American Airline’s flight data recorder shows the plane’s nose came up just before the fatal crash, the NTSB found.
“At one point very close to the impact, there was a slight change in pitch, an increase in pitch,” NTSB member Todd Inman said at a Saturday evening news conference.
A key question in the investigation is whether the Black Hawk helicopter was higher than the 200-foot altitude limit it was supposed to observe as it flew a designed route along the eastern bank of the Potomac.
Inman said the airplane’s flight data recorder gives an altitude reading of about 325 feet at the time of impact, but air traffic controllers never had an indication the helicopter went above 200 feet.
The NTSB also recovered the black box of the military helicopter, the agency said Sunday. Board chairperson Jennifer Homendy told CNN on Monday that information was recovered from the flight data recorder.
“They’re taking that data and making sure that it’s accurate, that the time stamps are right to try to marry it up with the (black box) data from the plane in order to provide that information publicly,” she said.
The black box is critical, Homendy added, because the DC tower radar does not provide a constant readout of aircraft altitude, updating only every five seconds.
“There’s a lot that occurs in five seconds, especially when a helicopter is moving at a pretty good clip,” she said.
Later Monday, the NTSB said the flight data recorder for the Black Hawk did not have timestamps and investigators would have to manually create them. A preliminary report from the NTSB will likely be published in a month.
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