Investigators recover plane black boxes from Washington air collision

Trump blames diversity for plane crash, sparking controversy as investigators recover black boxes from fatal mid-air collision.

Investigators on Thursday (January 30, 2025) recovered the black boxes from a passenger plane whose mid-air collision with a military helicopter over Washington's Potomac river killed 67 people, as rescuers pulled victims' bodies from the freezing water.

U.S. President Donald Trump launched a political attack blaming diversity and inclusion policies championed by his Democratic predecessors for causing the incident.

Mr. Trump's politicization of the tragedy came as the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said it had recovered the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder from the Bombardier jet operated by an American Airlines subsidiary that smashed into an Army Black Hawk helicopter late Wednesday.

"The recorders are at the NTSB labs for evaluation," the agency said in a statement to AFP.

According to a New York Times report, staffing was thin in the control tower at Reagan National Airport, where the airliner was about to land when the collision occurred.

One controller, rather than the usual two, was handling both plane and helicopter traffic, the Times quoted a preliminary Federal Aviation Administration report as saying.

A fireball erupted in the night sky and both aircraft tumbled into the icy Potomac, leaving rescue crews with the grim, difficult task of searching for bodies in the dark and cold.