On Wednesday, January 29, a U.S. airliner collided with a military plane. Both planes fell into the Potomac River, and the 67 people on board the two planes did not survive the tragedy. The black boxes were found to learn more about the causes of the accident.
Rescue teams have found the bodies of the 67 people killed in last week's collision between a passenger plane and a military helicopter around a Washington airport, authorities announced Tuesday, February 4.
In recent days, rescuers have continued to search the icy waters of the Potomac River to recover all the bodies after the worst air tragedy in the United States since 2001, in which all passengers on board both planes were killed.
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The various services involved in the search announced that they had “found (the bodies) of the 67 victims of the air collision”, specifying in a joint statement that all, except one, “have been positively identified”.
“We “Our hearts go out to the families of the victims,” they added, saying they were “determined to support them during this difficult time.” Rescue teams are now focusing on “recovering the remaining debris from the Potomac River.”, they also announced.
The recovery operations for the two planes that crashed into the Potomac, very close to Ronald Reagan Washington Airport, were launched on Monday in parallel with the search for the victims.
The black boxes analyzed
Five days after the collision, the first elements of the plane, including part of its fuselage, were recovered from the river on Monday. The black boxes are being analyzed by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which said it hopes to release “within 30 days” a preliminary report on the causes of the disaster.
According to the New York Times, the control tower at Ronald Reagan International Airport was understaffed on the night of the accident on January 29. Only one controller, instead of two, was handling passenger plane and helicopter traffic. Just after the disaster, Donald Trump had declared that he wanted to “try to understand” what happened.
The investigation could thus last “three years”, the President specified that he had “appointed a commission right away”. “We're going to try to clear all this up, we're going to make sure that nothing similar happens. The military is going to do very extensive audits”.