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		</div><p>Families of victims of the deadliest US air disaster in nearly 25 years visited the crash site on Sunday just outside Washington DC.</p>
<p>Dozens of people walked along the banks of the Potomac River near Reagan National Airport, close to where an American Airlines plane and an army Black Hawk helicopter collided on Wednesday, killing all 67 aboard.</p>
<p>They arrived in buses with a police escort, remembering loved ones as federal investigators work to piece together the events that led to the crash and recovery crews prepared to pull more wreckage from the chilly water.</p>
<p>Transportation secretary Sean Duffy on Sunday said he wanted to leave federal aviation investigators space to conduct their inquiry.</p>
<figure id="attachment_185450" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-185450" style="width: 640px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img src="https://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/IMG_7587.jpeg" alt="" width="640" height="426" class="size-full wp-image-185450" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-185450" class="wp-caption-text">Search and rescue boats work on the Potomac river</figcaption></figure>
<p>But he posed a range of questions about the crash while appearing on morning TV news programmes.</p>
<p>“What was happening inside the towers? Were they understaffed/ The position of the Black Hawk, the elevation of the Black Hawk, were the pilots of the Black Hawk wearing night vision goggles?” Mr Duffy asked on CNN.</p>
<p>The American Airlines flight, with 64 people on board, was preparing to land from Wichita, Kansas.</p>
<p>The army Black Hawk helicopter was on a training mission and had three soldiers on board.</p>
<p>Both aircraft plunged to the Potomac River after colliding.</p>
<p>The plane’s passengers included figure skaters returning from the 2025 US. Figure Skating Championships in Wichita, Kansas, and a group of hunters returning from a guided trip.</p>
<p>Army Staff Sergeant Ryan Austin O’Hara, 28; Chief Warrant Officer 2 Andrew Loyd Eaves, 39, and Captain Rebecca M Lobach were killed in the helicopter.</p>
<p>The National Transportation Safety Board said on Saturday that preliminary data showed conflicting readings about the altitudes of the plane and the helicopter.</p>
<figure id="attachment_185452" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-185452" style="width: 636px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img src="https://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/IMG_7588.jpeg" alt="" width="636" height="320" class="size-full wp-image-185452" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-185452" class="wp-caption-text">Buses carrying family members of the victims arrive at runway 33 near the wreckage site in the Potomac River</figcaption></figure>
<p>Investigators also said that about a second before impact, the plane’s flight recorder showed a change in its pitch.</p>
<p>But they did not say whether that change in angle meant that pilots were trying to perform an evasive manoeuvre to avoid the crash.</p>
<p>Data from the plane’s flight recorder showed its altitude as 325 feet, plus or minus 25 feet, when the crash happened, NTSB officials told reporters.</p>
<p>Data in the control tower, though, showed the Black Hawk at 200 feet, the maximum allowed altitude for helicopters in the area.</p>
<p>The discrepancy has yet to be explained.</p>
<p>Investigators said they hoped to reconcile the difference with data from the helicopter’s black box, which is taking more time to retrieve because it became waterlogged after the Black Hawk plunged into the Potomac.</p>
<p>They also said they plan to refine the tower data, which can be less reliable.</p>
<p>“That’s what our job is, to figure that out,” NTSB member Todd Inman said.</p>
<figure id="attachment_185454" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-185454" style="width: 640px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img src="https://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/IMG_7593.jpeg" alt="" width="640" height="427" class="size-full wp-image-185454" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-185454" class="wp-caption-text">The air traffic control tower at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport</figcaption></figure>
<p>“This is a complex investigation,” investigator in charge Brice Banning said. “There are a lot of pieces here. Our team is working hard to gather this data.”</p>
<p>Mr Banning said the plane’s cockpit voice recorder captured sound moments before the crash.</p>
<p>“The crew had a verbal reaction,” Mr Banning said, and the flight data recorder showed “the airplane beginning to increase its pitch. Sounds of impact were audible about one second later, followed by the end of the recording”.</p>
<p>Full NTSB investigations typically take at least a year, though investigators hope to have a preliminary report within 30 days.</p>
<p>Mr Inman said he spent hours meeting victims’ families since the crash. The families are struggling, he said.</p>
<p>“Some wanted to give us hugs. Some are just mad and angry,” Mr Inman said. “They are just all hurt. And they still want answers, and we want to give them answers.”</p>
<p>The remains of 42 people had been pulled from the river as of Saturday, including 38 that have been positively identified, officials said.</p>
<p>They expect to recover all of the remains, though the plane’s fuselage will probably have to be pulled from the water to retrieve the rest.</p>
<p>More than 300 people were taking part in the recovery effort at a given time, officials said. Two salvage barges were also deployed to lift heavy wreckage.</p>
<p>On Sunday, Mr Duffy said the Federal Aviation Administration was looking into staffing in the Reagan Airport control tower.</p>
<p>Investigators said there were five controllers on duty at the time of the crash: a local controller, ground controller, assistant controller, a supervisor and supervisor in training.</p>
<p>According to an FAA report obtained by The Associated Press, one controller was responsible for helicopter and plane traffic.</p>
<p>Those duties are often divided between two people but the airport typically combines them at 9.30pm, once traffic slows down.</p>
<p>On Wednesday, the tower supervisor combined them earlier, which the report called “not normal”.</p>
<p>“Staffing shortages for air traffic control has been a major problem for years and years,” Mr Duffy said, promising that President Donald Trump’s administration would address shortages with “bright, smart, brilliant people in towers controlling airspace”.</p>
<p>With the country already grieving, an air ambulance crashed in Philadelphia on Friday, killing all six people on board, including a child returning home to Mexico from treatment, and at least one person on the ground.</p>
<p>Also Friday, the FAA heavily restricted helicopter traffic around Reagan National, hours after Mr Trump claimed on social media that the helicopter had been flying higher than allowed.</p>
<p>“It was far above the 200-foot limit. That’s not really too complicated to understand, is it???” Mr Trump wrote on Truth Social.</p>
<p>Wednesday’s crash was the deadliest in the US since November 12, 2001, when a plane slammed into a residential neighbourhood in the New York City borough of Queens, just after take-off from Kennedy Airport.</p>
<p>The crash killed all 260 people on board and five people on the ground.</p>
<p>Experts regularly highlight that plane travel is overwhelmingly safe, but the crowded airspace around Reagan National can challenge even the most experienced pilots.</p>
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