Federal investigators said Friday they found the black box from the Army helicopter that collided with a passenger jet near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport Wednesday night, while one of the plane’s black boxes had water inside it.
National Transportation Safety Board member Todd Inman, who is leading the investigation into the crash that killed 67 people, said some water from the Potomac River leaked inside the American Airlines jet’s cockpit voice recorder.
The regional carrier jet from Wichita, Kansas, was approaching the airport’s runway just before 9 p.m. Wednesday when it collided with a Black Hawk helicopter on a routine training flight. Both aircraft plunged into the icy river below.
Mr. Inman said a waterlogged black box is not an uncommon challenge for investigators, and they are troubleshooting how to access its data.
“We deal with that all the time,” Mr. Inman said at the Friday evening briefing. “Our recorders division is one of the best in the world, actually — we have orders sent everywhere — so the [voice recorder] was soaked overnight in ionized water, at which point the team put the [voice recorder] into a vacuum oven in order to extract moisture. They are still checking electric connections to determine if they’re ready to try a download.”
The other black box, the flight data recorder, was in “what we consider good condition,” Mr. Inman said. “We have a high level of confidence that we’ll get full download in the very near future.”
He said salvage teams on the river were able to retrieve an intact black box from the Army Black Hawk helicopter involved in the collision.
“I can tell you from a visual inspection, we saw no exterior damage that would indicate that it was compromised at this time,” Mr. Inman said. “We have a high level of confidence that we will be able to have a full extraction from that as well.”
Investigators said salvage barges coming from Virginia Beach are expected to arrive at the scene Saturday morning. He anticipates the vessels will be able to pull the wreckage out of the river without much issue.
“The good news is, based upon the initial mapping … there are large chunks that will be easily recoverable and it will aid in the investigation,” Mr. Inman said.
Earlier Friday, D.C. Fire and EMS Chief John Donnelly said the barges are needed to remove the plane’s fuselage to get to victims still encased inside and around where the American Airlines flight arriving from Wichita, Kansas, went down.
Officials said 41 bodies have been pulled from the river. Chief Donnelly said he is confident the rest of those who were killed are in the plane’s debris field.
He added that investigators have not drawn any conclusions about who was at fault for the catastrophe, the deadliest aviation accident in more than two decades.
“We know that there was a significant incident in which the two aircraft collided — a pretty significant fireball,” Mr. Inman said.
The commercial jet was carrying 60 passengers and four crew members, while three soldiers were inside the Black Hawk. Officials said no one survived the crash.
• Matt Delaney can be reached at mdelaney@washingtontimes.com.