Officials said Sunday only a dozen victims are left to be recovered from the Potomac River following last week’s deadly midair collision involving an Army helicopter and a commercial jet near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
D.C. Fire and EMS Chief John Donnelly said 55 victims have been pulled from the water and identified after the bodies were found during surveys conducted before removing the plane’s fuselage.
Officials said salvage boats will begin lifting the plane’s wreckage out of the river Monday morning.
A total of 67 people — 64 inside the American Airlines jet coming from Wichita, Kansas, and three soldiers aboard the Black Hawk helicopter — were all killed when the two aircraft crashed into each other Wednesday night.
The collision was the worst domestic aviation accident in almost a quarter-century.
Chief Donnelly has maintained the last remaining victims are inside or around the doomed jet’s fuselage, and the recovery will be complete once it’s extracted from the water.
“If we knew where they were, we would already have them out,” the chief said to back his hunch the victims are still encased in the wreckage. “We have some work to do as the salvage operation goes on, and we will absolutely stay here and search until such a point as we have everybody.”
Chief Donnelly said he did not meet with the families earlier Sunday, who were at Reagan National for a private ceremony that morning.
Children as young as 11, union laborers, and foreign nationals from the Philippines and China all died when the plane went down Wednesday night.
The collision is the deadliest domestic airplane accident since 2001, when American Airlines Flight 587 crashed into a neighborhood in Queens, New York, and killed 265 people.
“These people have suffered a terrible loss, and they’re grieving, and I think that that’s exactly what you’d expect,” Chief Donnelly said. “There’s a whole range of emotions in that. I will say that they are a strong group of families that are focused on getting their loved ones back.”
On Saturday, investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board said they are trying to resolve a 100-foot difference in recorded altitudes for the ill-fated plane and helicopter.
The NTSB said the American Airlines jet’s flight recorder tracked its altitude at 325 feet, plus or minus 25 feet, when the collision took place shortly before 9 p.m. Wednesday. However, the airport control tower showed the helicopter at 200 feet in altitude at the time of the crash.
NTSB investigator Todd Inman said control tower data can be imprecise. He hoped information from the helicopter’s black box, which suffered water damage after the collision sent the Black Hawk spiraling into the river, could provide a clearer picture once a download is possible.
“This is a complex investigation,” NTSB investigator Brice Banning said. “There are a lot of pieces here. Our team is working hard to gather this data.”
Prior reporting from The New York Times suggested the helicopter was flying higher than normal and slightly off course when the collision occurred.
President Trump, who has blamed Democrats’ diversity-based hiring practices for causing the crash, posted on social media Friday that the Black Hawk was flying “far above” its mandated 200-foot height limit.
“That’s not really too complicated to understand, is it???” he posted on Truth Social.
Investigators said the plane’s flight recorders captured the pilots’ noticing the incoming helicopter moments before the collision.
“The crew had a verbal reaction,” Mr. Banning said. He added that the plane may have attempted last-second evasive maneuvers when the pilots tried to “increase its pitch.”
“Sounds of impact were audible about one second later, followed by the end of the recording,” he said.
• Matt Delaney can be reached at mdelaney@washingtontimes.com.