The air traffic control at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport is pictured, in the aftermath of the collision of American Eagle flight 5342 and a Black Hawk helicopter that crashed into the Potomac River, with the Capitol dome in the background, as seen from Virginia, U.S., January 30, 2025.
Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters
How an Army Black Hawk helicopter collided into an American Airlines jetliner in a deadly crash over the Potomac River Wednesday night is still unknown, but questions are emerging, including the altitude of the military helicopter.
Investigators are still pulling 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.
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 Wednesday when it collided with the Black Hawk helicopter.
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 on 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 the Washington, D.C., area and the 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 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 recorder 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 on 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.”
