President Donald Trump shared findings from the black boxes recovered after the deadly mid-air collision between a passenger jet and an Army helicopter over the Potomac River, highlighting potential errors that may have contributed to the tragic incident.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump stated that he had learned the Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter was flying “far above the 200-foot limit” set by the Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates the crowded airspace over Washington, D.C. “It was far above the 200-foot limit. That’s not really too complicated to understand, is it???” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
U.S. military helicopter crashes, such as the one that downed a commercial American Airlines flight over the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday night, are extremely rare. However, military statistics and aviation experts indicate an increase in these incidents in recent years, Fox News added. AA Flight 5342, traveling from Wichita to Reagan National Airport (DCA), had 64 people on board, including passengers and crew members. The Army Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk, which was conducting a training operation, had three soldiers aboard and originated from Fort Belvoir in Virginia.
“It’s concerning, certainly, the number of incidents that there have been,” Timothy Loranger, an aviation attorney at Wisner Baum and a Marine Corps veteran, told Fox News Digital. “But if you compare it to the thousands and thousands of hours of flights that occur without any incident … that’s all very good.” Still, according to Army data, helicopter crashes, while rare, have ticked up over the past year.
The collision has raised concerns about how such a devastating accident could occur in one of the most tightly controlled airspaces in the country and the world. The last major fatal commercial crash took place in 2009, when a Continental Airlines flight crashed into a house in Buffalo, New York, resulting in the deaths of 49 people.
“Is there something that we can point to? Training? Is the budget of the military sufficient to make sure that pilots and the crew have enough training and experience in order to fly those aircraft?” Loranger said. “Those are the kinds of questions that have to be asked. If it’s a problem with the aircraft itself, a mechanical issue, what is that? Is it a design issue? Is it a manufacturing issue? Is it a maintenance issue?”