President Donald Trump listens as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House, Thursday, Jan. 30, 2025, in Washington. (Alex Brandon/AP)
WASHINGTON — The Army’s 12th Aviation Battalion that includes the Black Hawk helicopter involved in the deadly midair crash with a commercial jet over the Potomac River has been granted a 48-hour operational pause, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Thursday.
“The military does dangerous things. It does routine things on a regular basis. Tragically, last night, a mistake was made. I think [President Donald Trump] is right. There was some sort of an elevation issue that we have immediately begun investigating at the [Defense Department] and Army level,” Hegseth said during a White House briefing about the crash.
Trump, who orchestrated the briefing with Hegseth, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Vice President JD Vance, blamed the crash, in part, on diversity, equity and inclusion programs and Democrats. Since Trump returned to office, he has signed hundreds of executive orders including removing DEI programs from the government.
“I have common sense, OK? And unfortunately, a lot of people don’t. We want brilliant people doing this,” Trump told reporters about air traffic controllers and other aviation jobs. “When you have 60 planes coming in during a short period of time, and they’re all coming in different directions, and you’re dealing with very high-level computer work and very complex computers. And one of the other things I will tell you is that the systems that were built, I was going to rebuild the entire system, and then we had an election that didn’t turn out the way it should have, but they didn’t build the systems properly.”
Emergency officials have said they believe all passengers and crew involved in the midair collision Wednesday evening between an American Airlines jet and the military helicopter were killed.
“We are now at the point where we are switching from a rescue operation to a recovery operation,” said John Donnelly, a fire chief involved in the emergency response. “We don’t believe there are any survivors.”
At least 28 bodies have been pulled from the icy waters of the Potomac River as of Thursday morning. The jet was transporting 60 passengers and four crew members and attempting to land at about 9 p.m. EST at Ronald Reagan National Airport.
The three-person Army helicopter crew was flying a UH-60 Black Hawk from Bravo Company of the 12th Aviation Battalion at Davison Army Airfield, based at Fort Belvoir in Virginia. The helicopter was on a training flight. Military aircraft frequently conduct training flights in and around the congested and heavily restricted airspace of Washington for familiarization and continuity of government planning.
Hegseth said in a recorded video posted on X that the crew was “fairly experienced” and conducting an “annual proficiency training flight.” They had night vision goggles.
“The [Federal Aviation Administration], [National Transportation Safety Board] and the United States Army will investigate. The NTSB will lead the investigation. We are working with local officials and will provide any additional information once it becomes available,” Ron McLendon of the U.S. Army Military District of Washington said in a statement Thursday.
The cause of the collision is still unknown, but officials said flight conditions were clear as the jet was coming from Wichita, Kan., was making a routine landing when the helicopter flew into its path.
“On final approach into Reagan National, it collided with a military aircraft on an otherwise normal approach,” American Airlines CEO Robert Isom said. “At this time, we don’t know why the military aircraft came into the path of the ... aircraft.”
Trump said during the briefing that the helicopter made a “slight turn at the very end and it was by that time too late.”
“It was exactly at the same line, and somebody should have been able to point that out. So all of this is going to be studied but … some really bad things happened, and some things happened that shouldn’t have happened,” he said.
Jonathan Koziol, chief of staff of the Army’s aviation directorate, told reporters that the instructor pilot, who was the designated pilot in command, had 1,000 flying hours while the other pilot had 500 hours. He added the crew chief in the back of the helicopter had been with the unit for a “very long time.”
Koziol said the route over the Potomac, known as Route 4, was flown regularly and would have been relatively easy for experienced pilots such as the ones aboard the helicopter that crashed. He added the crew would have been using visual cues and interacting with air traffic control to ensure they avoided any risk.
“This is a relatively easy corridor to fly. This should not have been a problem,” Koziol said, adding the maximum altitude for Route 4 was 200 feet.
It is unclear how high the Black Hawk was flying Wednesday night.
Passengers on the jet included a group of U.S. and Russian figure skaters, their coaches and family members who were returning from a development camp that followed the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Wichita.
The FAA said the crash occurred in some of the most tightly controlled and monitored airspace in the world, about three miles south of the White House and the U.S. Capitol.
Investigators will try to piece together the aircrafts’ final moments before their collision, including contact with air traffic controllers as well as a loss of altitude by the passenger jet.
Todd Inman, a NTSB member, said it is too soon to say whether the crash was a human or mechanical failure. NTSB’s intention is to have a preliminary report in 30 days and are now establishing various working groups to help with the investigation.
“Right now, we’re going through the debris fields. Nothing we’ve seen would indicate that maybe slides or [parachutes] were deployed,” Inman said. “It was a very quick, rapid impact.”
American Airlines Flight 5342 was inbound to the airport at an altitude of about 400 feet and a speed of about 140 miles per hour when it suffered a rapid loss of altitude over the river, according to data from its radio transponder. The Canadian-made Bombardier CRJ-701 twin-engine jet, manufactured in 2004, can be configured to carry up to 70 passengers.
A few minutes before landing, air traffic controllers asked the arriving commercial jet if it could land on the shorter Runway 33 at the airport and the pilots said they were able. Controllers then cleared the plane to land. Flight tracking sites showed the plane adjust its approach to the new runway.
Less than 30 seconds before the crash, an air traffic controller asked the helicopter if it had the arriving plane in sight. The controller made another radio call to the helicopter moments later. Seconds after that, the two aircraft collided. The plane’s radio transponder stopped transmitting about 2,400 feet short of the runway, roughly over the middle of the river.
Video from an observation camera at the nearby Kennedy Center showed two sets of lights consistent with aircraft appearing to join in a fireball.
“I know that flight. I’ve flown it several times myself,” said Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan. “This is a very personal circumstance.”
The collision occurred on a warm winter evening in Washington, with temperatures registering as high as 60 degrees, following a stretch days earlier of intense cold and ice. On Wednesday, the Potomac River was 36 degrees, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The National Weather Service reported wind gusts of up to 25 mph were possible in the area throughout the evening.
Some 300 first responders were on scene. Inflatable rescue boats were launched into the Potomac River from a point along the George Washington Parkway, just north of the airport, and first responders set up light towers from the shore to illuminate the area near the collision site. At least a half-dozen boats were scanning the water using searchlights.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
