More than 40 bodies have recovered from water after clash in the air in Washington

More than 40 bodies have been recovered from the Potomac River after the air clash of a passenger plane and a US army helicopter on Wednesday in Washington DC.

Washington's firefighters and emergency services said Friday that more than 40 bodies from the remains of the remains have been recovered Commercial passenger plane and a military helicopter that collided And they crashed on the Potomac River on Wednesday night.

The operations to recover the bodies of the 67 people who died in the collision resumed at dawn on Friday. The National Transport Security Board (NTSB), the Federal Agency that leads the investigation of the accident) is at the scene along with local and regional medical emergency equipment.

The commercial plane, a regional Bombardier CRJ700 aircraft operated by PSA Airlines, a subsidiary of American Airlines, transported 64 passengers and crew, while the UH-60 Black Black Hawk helicopter from the US army carried a crew of three people. The authorities said there were no survivors.

The NTSB reported Thursday night that the cabin voices recorder and the plane flight data recorder, often called black boxes, have been recovered and are in the laboratories of the agency for its evaluation.

In an interview on Friday with the American Fox News chain, the United States Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegesh accident moment.

Hegesh said Thursday that the crew, that he did an evaluation of night flight training, included a sergeant, a practical captain and a chief noncommissioned officer, who was an instructor. The crew had provided night vision glasses for the flight, but Hegseth said it was not clear if they were using them.

The Secretary of Defense also said Thursday that the altitude of the helicopter was being investigated at the time of the accident. The two aircraft collided when the passenger plane tried to land at the Reagan National Airport.

Hegseth said that voice recorders and flight data could also determine who was in communication with the airport air traffic control tower and if there was any confusion regarding the instructions they received.

The newspaper The Washington Post, He cited a government report, said Thursday that the control tower did not have enough personnel on Wednesday night. The report said that two people were doing the tasks of four people inside the tower at the time of the collision.

A similar report by the American station NBC Newsciting a source familiar with the investigation, said that a supervisor in the tower let an air traffic controller leave his turn before the collision.

That decision, according to the report, left a controller in charge of the traffic of airplanes and helicopters in the area, when there is normally a controller in charge of each type of aircraft.

The report of the NBC He points out that, according to the rules of the Federal Aviation Administration, a single person can do both jobs, although it is not considered to be the optimal option. On Friday, the agency significantly restricted the traffic of helicopters in the vicinity of the Reagan National Airport of Washington until new notice.

At a press conference on Thursday, American senators Tim Kaine and Mark Warner in Virginia said they had expressed concerns over the years over the high volume of air traffic in the Washington area, but that the results of the Investigation of the accident before dealing with that specific concern.

The American artistic skating organization said that several members of their community, including athletes, coaches and relatives, were among the passengers of the plane.

The Kremlin and the Russian media said that Russian artistic skaters also traveled, including the couple of world champions Shishkova and Vadim Naumov. Trump said his administration would facilitate the return of his remains to Russia.

Wednesday's accident was the most fatal aviation incident on American soil since 2001, when an American Airlines flight crashed into Belle Harbor, New York, and 260 people died.

(With information from AP, AFP and Reuters)