Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
The US military helicopter is blocked as the one that knocked down a American Airlines Commercial Flight According to the last years, the Potomac River in Washington, DC, is very rare, but there has been an increase in these incidents in recent years, according to military statistics and an aviation expert.
A total of 64 people, including passengers and members of the flight crew, were aboard the 5342 AA flight from Wichita to the Reagan National Airport (DCA). Three soldiers were carrying out a training operation in the Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk Army That came from Fort Belvoir in Virginia.
“It is worrying, certainly, the number of incidents that has been,” Timothy Lorenger, an aviation lawyer in Wisner Baum and veteran of Marines’s body, told Fox News News News. “But compare it with the thousands and thousands of hours of flights that occur without any incident … everything is very good.”
The collision has caused questions about how such a devastating accident could happen in one of the most closely controlled air spaces in the country and the world. The last significant fatal commercial accident occurred in 2009, when a flight from Continental Airlines crashed into a house in Buffalo, New York, killing 49 people.
DC air accident timeline: air collision involves 67 passengers, crew members, soldiers
The crew recovers the remains of American Airlines flight 5342 on the Potomac River, near Washington, DC, on January 30, 2025. The plane was involved in a fatal collision with a black hawk helicopter from the US army last night. (Leigh Green for Fox News Digital)
“Is there anything we can point out? Training the military budget is enough to make sure that pilots and crew have enough training and experience to fly those planes?” Lorenger said. “Those are the types of questions that should be asked. If it is a problem with the aircraft itself, a mechanical problem, what is that? Is it a design problem? Is it a manufacturing problem? Is it a maintenance problem ? “
Military helicopter clashes, although unusual, have occurred more frequently during the last year, according to army data.
The FBI agents are close to the rubble, after American Airlines Flight 5342 collided with a Black Hawk helicopter while approaching Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and crashed into the Potomac River in Arlington, Virginia, on January 30 2025. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)
The 2024 fiscal year had the most serious aviation incidents that resulted in deaths since fiscal year 2014 and the worst rate of deaths and serious injuries due to incidents per 100,000 hours since fiscal year 2007, According to army statistics.
Fox News counted at least 10 deaths from collos of US military helicopters only in 2024, including Five Marines on the same planeand others injured. Since 2012, there have been 21 deaths from Black Hawk clashes.
Lorenger called the increase in military helicopter deaths last year “on.”
Look: Video shows an air accident in the air
The Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegesh, told “Fox & Friends on Friday that the officials” will reach the bottom of what happened here. “
“It is completely unacceptable in the capital or anywhere in our nation. The military trains, and trains robust. And we will not stop training, although there is a pause in this unit, in this exercise, which is important . “… we have to train safely. Something like this can never happen. And it is completely unacceptable.”
Look: Hegseth promises to deliver answers
The instructor pilot in charge that flew Black Hawk on Wednesday for a training operation apparently had 1,000 flight hours, which is considered very experienced, and the co -pilot that was also being evaluated had 500 hours of flight, which is considered An average amount of experience, according to an American official who spoke with Fox News.
“This is a relatively easy route,” an army noncommissioned officer said Thursday, five with decades of experience in helicopters of the flying army of the Pentagon in the Pentagon. The pilot flew through the center of the river, which is usually dark, probably wears night vision glasses. Memorial Bridge would have been his last control point.
On January 29, Washington, DC, plane collision map.
Military and other governmental helicopters fly the same route almost daily, said the senior army pilot and the noncommissioned officer to journalists.
“This should not have been a problem,” said the official.
Lorenger described DCA as “a very complicated airspace, a very busy airspace.”
Photos of victims after the collision between a Jet American Airlines and a US black hawk helicopter. (Getty images)
“There are many airplanes and airplanes that enter and leave,” he said, adding that the planes have systems designed to help give information to pilots about pilots or other objects that fly close to avoid collisions such as Wednesday. It could have been difficult for the commercial plane and the black hawk see at night on the river, Lorenger said.
The staffing of the Air Control Tower in DCA “was not normal for the time of day and the volume of traffic,” according to an internal report by the Federal Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reviewed by The New York Times.
Victims identified in a DC plane crash that involves Jet American Airlines and military helicopter
The controller that was Helicopter management On Wednesday night he also instructed the planes that were landing and leaving the airport tracks, The Times reported. These tasks are generally assigned to two controllers.
A plane flies near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, after the collision of the 5342 American Eagle flight and a Black Hawk helicopter that crashed into the Potomac River in Arlington, Virginia, on January 30, 2025. (Eduardo Muñoz/Reuters)
“I don’t know exactly how the staff happened in that particular air traffic control tower,” Hegseth told “Fox & Friends.” “It seems that there was a shortage (of controllers), and the investigation will tell us more about that. But the environment around which we chose pilots or air traffic controls, as the president correctly pointed out yesterday, it is better to be the highest possible level – The best of the best they are managing … a flight per minute and administer radio traffic. “
Click here to get the Fox News application
Fox News Digital has communicated with FAA.
The air control tower at the Reagan airport has yet been for years with 19 totally certified controllers as of September 2023. However, the FFA union and the controllers requested 30 controllers in its personnel objectives.
Jennifer Griffin, Liz Friden and Louis Casiano de Fox News contributed to this report.
