Feb. 1 (UPI) — National Transportation Safety Board officials will provide an update Saturday evening on the investigation into this week’s deadly mid-air collision between an American Airlines regional jet and a military helicopter.
Saturday’s briefing will take place inside the historic lobby in Terminal 1 at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport at 6 p.m. EST, the NTSB confirmed on X.
The Federal Aviation Administration Saturday urged people not to fly recreational drones around the crash site.
“Drone Pilots: Washington, DC remains a strict No Drone Zone. Do not interfere with official response efforts at Reagan Washington National Airport. Violators may face fines or criminal charges,” the FAA said on X.
Barges dispatched from Virginia Beach, Va., arrived at the Potomac crash site early Saturday to help with the recovery operations.
Remains of 41 of the 67 victims of the mid-air collision between American Eagle Flight 5342 and a military helicopter have been recovered so far, officials confirmed Friday.
Twenty-eight have been identified and next-of-kin notifications have been sent to 18 families, D.C. Fire and EMS Chief John Donnelly told reporters during a briefing by the unified disaster command team in Washington.
The Army has identified two of the soldiers aboard the helicopter as Staff Sgt. Ryan Austin O’Hara, 28, of Lilburn, Ga., and Chief Warrant Officer 2 Andrew Loyd Eaves, 39, of Great Mills, Md. The name of the third soldier is being withheld at the request of the family, the Army said.
Dive teams are using sonar to scan for more human remains in the icy waters of the Potomac River, and officials are searching the shoreline for debris from Wednesday’s collision, in which 64 passengers were onboard Flight 5432 and three service members onboard the U.S. Army Sikorsky H-60 Black Hawk helicopter were killed.
“I believe for us to recover the rest of the remains, that we are going to need to get the fuselage out of the water,” he said.
Two recorder devices previously recovered from the airliner are expected to yield usable results, despite the presence of “water intrusion” in one of them.
The “black box” from the helicopter has been recovered in good condition.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced that the FAA is restricting helicopter traffic around the airport.
