Investigators on Thursday recovered the black boxes from a passenger plane that collided midair with a military helicopter over Washington’s Potomac River, killing all 67 people, as rescuers pulled bodies from the freezing water.
US President Donald Trump launched a political attack blaming diversity and inclusion policies championed by his Democratic predecessors for causing the incident.
Trump’s politicization of the tragedy came as the US 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 collided with a US Army Black Hawk helicopter late on Wednesday.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“The recorders are at the NTSB labs for evaluation,” the agency said in a statement.
A New York Times report said that staffing was thin in the control tower at Ronald Reagan Washington 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 US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) report as saying.
A fireball erupted in the night sky and both aircraft tumbled into the icy Potomac, leaving rescue crews to search for victims in the dark and cold.
As of Thursday evening, 40 bodies had been recovered, US media reports said.
The passenger plane was carrying 64 people and the Black Hawk had three aboard.
Trump, who took office 10 days ago, turned a news conference on the disaster into a platform for his crusade against diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) — a series of often decades-old measures meant to combat racism and sexism across the nation.
Accusing his Democratic predecessors Joe Biden and Barack Obama of having kept good employees out of the aviation agency in pursuit of DEI, he said: “They actually came out with a directive: ‘too white.’ And we want the people that are competent.”
Trump aimed criticism directly at Biden’s openly gay transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg.
“He’s run it right into the ground with his diversity,” Trump said.
The message was hammered home, as US Vice President J.D. Vance and new US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth took turns at the podium to repeat — without evidence — the hard-right theory that diversity measures keep capable Americans out of responsible jobs.
Asked again by reporters whether he was blaming workplace diversity for the crash, Trump answered: “It could have been.”
Buttigieg responded on X, calling Trump “despicable.”
“As families grieve, Trump should be leading, not lying,” he said.
US Senator Chris Murphy posted that Trump’s comments “blaming the FAA’s hiring of women and black people for the crash — was disgusting.”
“He’s in charge. This happened on his watch,” Murphy said.
Trump later issued an official memo directing the government to investigate “deterioration in hiring standards” under Biden and “replacement” of anyone unqualified.
Among those on the airliner were several US skaters and coaches, US Figure Skating said. Officials in Moscow also confirmed the presence of Russian couple Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, who won the 1994 world pairs title.
Two Chinese citizens were also among the victims of the crash, Xinhua news agency reported, citing the Chinese embassy.
A Filipino police officer was also on board, Philippine police said.
The force of the collision made it clear early on that survivors were unlikely.
“I just saw a fireball and it was gone,” one air traffic controller was heard telling a colleague after communication with the helicopter was cut.
Transport officials said both aircraft were on standard flight patterns on a clear night with good visibility.
Hegseth said the chopper had “a fairly experienced crew that was doing a required annual night evaluation.”
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