Investigation looking at altitude, staffing and communication

How an Army Black Hawk helicopter collided with American Airlines jetliner in a deadly crash over the Potomac River on Wednesday night is still unknown, but questions are emerging, including about the altitude of the military helicopter.

Investigators are still recovering evidence from the Potomac and looking at everything from newly pulled flight data and cockpit voice recorder information. All 64 people on American Airlines Flight 5342 and the three aboard the helicopter were killed in the fireball collision near the Washington, D.C.’s Reagan National Airport, marking the deadliest U.S. air crash since 2001.

Forty-one bodies have been recovered from the crash site, Fire and EMS Chief John Donnelly said at a press conference Friday. Of those, 28 have been positively identified.

The PSA Airlines Bombardier CRJ-700 aircraft was flying at about 300 feet on final approach into Reagan National’s Runway 33 shortly before 9 p.m. ET on Wednesday when it collided with the Black Hawk helicopter.

PSA Airlines is one of American’s subsidiaries that flies regional routes, flights marketed as American Eagle.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the helicopter was on an annual proficiency training flight.

According to Federal Aviation Administration rules, helicopters, which regularly cross through and around Washington, between military bases, the Pentagon and other locations, must fly in the area close to the airport at a maximum of 200 feet.

“In DC, it’s kind of a unique environment,” National Transportation Safety Board member Todd Inman said at a briefing Thursday afternoon. He noted that there are helicopter zones, or tracks, in Washington. “This one was transitioning from track one to four as part of their normal procedure. If you live in DC, you see a lot of helicopters going down into this area. So there’s a very well-defined system.”

The FAA on Friday issued new flight restrictions for helicopters around the Washington, D.C., area and Reagan National Airport, with some exceptions for medical evacuation and law enforcement operations, the agency told NBC News.

The airspace between certain bridges, or Zone 1, is currently not active. In nearby Zone 4, helicopters are only permitted to fly south of the Woodrow Wilson Bridge.

The airspace is some of the most congested in the country and Reagan National says its main runway is the busiest in the U.S.

While the investigation is ongoing, two out of three runways are closed at the airport because of their proximity to the crash area. Terry Liercke, vice president and airport manager, said at a press conference Friday that he expects those closures could last for about a week.

Officials at the airport said more than 100 flights had been canceled Friday, citing the runway closures and bad weather.

“As you turn to align with the runway, your concentration is on the flight path to get on the runway quickly and get the airplane stopped,” said John Cox, a retired airline pilot and aviation safety consultant.

The NTSB is leading the investigation into the collision that ended in a fireball. The agency said it is still gathering information and that it is too early to draw conclusions.

“It’s not that we don’t have information. We do have information,” said NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy. “We have substantial amounts of information. We need to verify information. We need to take our time to make sure it is accurate.”

The NTSB recovered flight data and cockpit voice recorders from the passenger jet. The boxes were taken to NTSB labs for evaluation, the agency said.

President Donald Trump on Friday wrote on Truth Social that the helicopter “was flying too high, by a lot. It was far above the 200 foot limit. That’s not really too complicated to understand, is it???”

Hegseth made a similar statement at a White House briefing Thursday.

“Tragically, last night a mistake was made,” he said. “There was some sort of an elevation issue that we have immediately begun investigating at the DoD and Army level.”

Both statements were unusual in the wake of a crash and the early stages of an airline accident investigation.

The accident ends a decade-and-a-half period of air safety in the U.S., which hasn’t seen a fatal commercial crash since 2009, even though passenger traffic has increased by more than 25% to records. That crash prompted a host of stricter pilot training and rest standards.

Shortages of air traffic controllers has been a concern for years, and a spate of close calls at U.S. airports have drawn scrutiny from lawmakers and regulators.

Staffing at Reagan National the night of the crash wasn’t normal for the amount of traffic and time of day on the night of the crash, according to a preliminary FAA safety report on the collision, NBC reported on Thursday.

Citing a source, NBC said the airport tower usually has a controller who focuses on helicopter traffic, though FAA guidelines allow for that position to be combined with another controller’s position, so one controller controls both airplanes and helicopters. The FAA didn’t respond to a request for comment on the report.

NBC News reported on Friday, citing a source familiar with the investigation that a supervisor at the Reagan National tower let a controller leave their shift early.