An audio from the air traffic control tower reveals conversations before the accident between a commercial airplane and a U.S. Army helicopter at Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C.
PUBLICIDAD
The authorities reported that the 67 people traveling in the aircrafts have died: 64 in the American Airlines regional plane and three in the helicopter.
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What is known about the conversation between the control tower and the helicopter?
In the audio, recorded seconds before the mid-air collision, you can hear an air traffic controller asking the helicopter crew if they had seen the plane.
"PAT25 [military helicopter], do you have a CRJ [American Airlines] in sight?", he asked. Moments later, the controller made another radio call to the helicopter saying: "PAT 25, pass behind the CRJ", apparently indicating to wait for the twin-engine Bombardier CRJ-701 jet to pass.
"The night was clear, the plane and the helicopter were following standard flight patterns, and there was conventional communication between the aircraft and the control tower," said Sean Duffy, the new Secretary of Transportation of the United States, who has been in the position for two days.
"We have the first indicators of what happened here," said Duffy, without giving details, awaiting further investigation.
"It is not uncommon for a military aircraft to fly over the river and for a plane to land at the airport," he said. When asked about what President Donald Trump said in a social media post regarding the crash possibly being avoided, Duffy said, "based on what I have seen so far, do I think this could have been avoided? Of course."
What have been the rescue efforts following the plane crash?
At least 28 bodies were recovered from the icy waters of the Potomac River after the mid-air collision.
The airplane fuselage was found upside down in three sections, in a part of the river where the water barely reaches waist height. The helicopter wreckage was also found.
This is the deadliest plane crash in the United States since November 12, 2001, when an American Airlines flight crashed into a residential area in Belle Harbor, New York, shortly after takeoff, resulting in the deaths of all 260 people on board.
The most recent major fatal crash involving a US commercial airline occurred in 2009, near Buffalo, New York. The 45 passengers, two pilots, and two flight attendants aboard the Colgan Air Bombardier DHC-8 plane all perished. Another person on the ground also lost their life, bringing the total death toll to 50. An investigation revealed that the captain inadvertently stalled the plane while approaching the Buffalo airport.