Investigators are being urged to quickly find answers on what caused Wednesday night’s collision between an passenger plane and a U.S. Army helicopter over Washington, D.C., killing all 67 people onboard the two aircraft, but the probe is still expected to take at least several months.
U.S. President Donald Trump and his transportation secretary Sean Duffy on Thursday both committed to ensuring an investigation into the crash isn’t unnecessarily lengthy.
Duffy, after offering condolences to the victims’ families, said the administration will “commit to them that we are going to get to the bottom of this investigation — not in three years, not in four years, but as quickly as possible.”
The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is leading the investigation, along with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The U.S. Department of Defense and U.S. Army are also investigating the role the military Black Hawk helicopter played in the collision, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said, and assisting the NTSB.
The Transportation Safety Board of Canada told Global News it was sending two representatives to assist in the investigation, which involved a Bombardier-made jet and allows Canadian representatives to take part in the investigation under International Civil Aviation Organization rules.
“This is an all-hand-on-deck event,” NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said at a media briefing Thursday.
“We are going to leave no stone unturned in this investigation. We are going to conduct a thorough investigation of this entire tragedy, looking at the facts.”
NTSB member Todd Inman told reporters the agency intends to release a preliminary report within 30 days, and will then issue a final report after facts are gathered from the scene and analyzed, and the investigation is concluded.
“We will not be determining the probable cause of the accident while we are here on scene, nor will we speculate about what may have caused this accident,” Inman said.
“We do not know enough facts to be able to rule in or out human factor, mechanical factors. That is part of the NTSB investigative process.”
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Homendy said investigators already have “substantial amounts of information” and data but still need to analyze it.
How air crash investigations play out
Federal investigators will try to piece together the moments before the collision, including any communication between the two aircraft and air traffic controllers, as well as other actions of the jet and helicopter pilots may have taken.
The NTSB says it tries to complete such investigations within 12 to 24 months.
During that time, investigators will collect all available evidence from the scene of the accident as well as outside it, including flight logs, maintenance records, and personal interviews.
The NTSB have not yet recovered the flight data recorders or the black boxes from either aircraft, officials confirmed Thursday. Inman said he was confident those devices, which will provide key data on the last moments of the flight, will be found from the underwater wreckage site.
Homendy noted that while it’s not unusual for NTSB officials to have to recover evidence from the water, a water crash is a “worst-case scenario” made even more difficult by the freezing cold conditions in the Potomac River in late January.
Inman said investigators will be separated into working groups to handle specific areas.
The operations group will look at the recent histories of all flight crew members leading up to the collision. The structures, powerplants and systems groups will study various aspects of the passenger jet, including the engines and flight control systems, and determine the plane’s pre-impact course and altitude. A separate helicopter group will study issues related to the military aircraft.
Because air traffic control at Ronald Reagan National Airport was communicating with the flight crews of both aircraft at the time of the collision, those personnel will also be interviewed by a separate air traffic control group.
Inman said a human performance group will work with the operations, air traffic control and helicopter groups to study crew performance any any “human error” factors from before the collision that may have played a role, “including fatigue, medication, medical histories, training, workload, equipment design and work environment.”
Inman would not confirm reporting from New York Times and Associated Press, citing an internal preliminary FAA safety report, that said there was inadequate staffing at the air traffic control tower. The media reports said a single controller was handling helicopter traffic in the vicinity of the airport while also directing planes that were landing and departing — a job typically done by two people.
He said a “very large package of information” on air traffic control was delivered by the FAA early Thursday morning that still needs to be reviewed and analyzed.
The unions representing various workers involved — including the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, Air Line Pilots Association, and Association of Flight Attendants — are cooperating with the investigation and will work with the specific NTSB working groups interviewing their members.
PSA Airlines and GE Aerospace, the companies behind the passenger plane, and the helicopter manufacturer Sikorsky are also involved. Inman said MHI RJ — formerly a division of Bombardier, which made the plane — will work with TSB Canada as a technical advisor.
NTSB investigations into aviation crashes can sometimes take years to complete. The agency has yet to conclude its investigation into a February 2023 small plane crash in Nevada that killed all five people on board, while another open investigation began in September 2023.
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