The number of people believed to have lost their lives in the deadliest US air crash in recent years is 67. Their families are looking for answers and plead to know what was the cause that led the American Airlines jet to collide mid-air with the US Army Black Hawk helicopter.
The American Airlines Flight 5342 was coming in to land at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Washington D.C, when the tragic crash took place. Both aircrafts plummeted into the Potomac River, whose icy water makes the search mission difficult.
Currently, the investigation regarding the circumstances leading to the crash is ongoing.
However, a full investigation will likely take months to conduct. Investigators will need to make a thorough analysis of the plane’s black boxes and flight data, as well as to conduct interviews with the Air Traffic Control employees, thus they said they won’t be making any speculations at this point.
Nevertheless, The New York Times published a preliminary report from the FAA.
According to it, the number of controllers in charge of the air space around Reagan Washington is at least two. Sadly, on the night of the tragic crash, the supervisor in charge let one of the controllers leave, leaving just one traffic controller on the job.
As per the publication, the FAA suggests staffing at the time was “not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic.”
Several federal agencies had previously brought up the issue with the lack of traffic controllers. They claimed the expected shifts of 10 hours a day, six days a week, would leave those doing the important job severely fatigued.
President Trump commented on the American Airlines crash and questioned if it was something that could be “prevented.”
“The airplane was on a perfect and routine line of approach to the airport,” he wrote on his social media site Truth Social. “The helicopter was going straight at the airplane for an extended period of time.
“It is a CLEAR NIGHT, the lights on the plane were blazing, why didn’t the helicopter go up or down, or turn. Why didn’t the control tower tell the helicopter what to do instead of asking if they saw the plane. This is a bad situation that looks like it should have been prevented. NOT GOOD!!!”
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