(The Center Square) – Nearly a week following the mid-air collision over the Potomac River between an American Airlines jet and an Army helicopter, authorities have announced that all 67 victims have been recovered.
The Unified Command announced Tuesday afternoon that 64 victims from the down jet and three soldiers from the Black Hawk helicopter were recovered, and sixty-six of the remains have been positively identified.
The announcement follows as U.S. Navy salvage teams have been working to remove the wreckage from the river since Monday. The command said once the plane’s wreckage has been recovered, the teams will shift focus to recovering the wreckage of the downed Black Hawk.
The National Transportation and Safety Board said FBI dive teams will then recover smaller pieces of the wreckage, which they expect will take several days to complete.
The Center Square observed the scene over the weekend, noting the helicopter wreckage rests south of what appeared to be parts of the airline’s fuselages, only yards from military housing and child development center on Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling.
An investigative team from the NTSB has obtained “training and flight logs for both flight crews and maintenance logs for both aircraft.”
“The human performance group is building several day histories for both flight crews to include their daily activities. The Air Traffic Control group has completed interviews of all five staffed positions in the tower,” according to an NTSB update.
The investigators will continue to “synchronize flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder data from both aircraft, ATC communications and radar scope data” in an effort to piece together a “detailed timeframe.”
The NTSB noted that the chopper’s data recorder did not have timestamps, which will require investigators to manually create them, requiring additional time.
The NTSB expects to have a preliminary report within 30 days of the accident.
“The preliminary report will contain factual information gathered during the initial phase of the investigation. A probable cause of the crash and any contributing factors will come in the final report, which is expected in 12 to 24 months,” according to the NTSB.
Wednesday will mark one week since the mid-air collision between American Airlines flight 5342 en route from Wichita, Kan., and the Army helicopter stationed out of Ft. Belvoir, Va., south of the nation’s capital. The jet was on approach to land at Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) when the collision occurred.
