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.”
A subsidiary of a Hong Kong-based company that has lost control of two critical ports on the Panama Canal said it is seeking US$2 billion of compensation in damages from Panama over its “illegal” takeover of the ports. Panama Ports Co, a unit of Hong Kong’s CK Hutchison Holdings (長江和記實業), on Friday said in a statement that it is demanding the sum under international arbitration proceedings that it had already started. The Panamanian government last week seized control of the Balboa and Cristobal ports on each end of the Panama Canal, after the country’s Supreme Court declared earlier that a concession allowing
DETERRENCE: With 1,000 indigenous Hsiung Feng II and III missiles and 400 Harpoon missiles, the nation would boast the highest anti-ship missile density in the world With Taiwan wrapping up mass production of Hsiung Feng II and III missiles by December and an influx of Harpoon missiles from the US, Taiwan would have the highest density of anti-ship missiles in the world, a source said yesterday. Taiwan is to wrap up mass production of the indigenous anti-ship missiles by the end of year, as the Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology has been meeting production targets ahead of schedule, a defense official with knowledge of the matter said. Combined with the 400 Harpoon anti-ship missiles Taiwan expects to receive from the US by 2028, the nation would have
POSSIBILITIES EMERGE: With Taiwan’s victory and Japan’s narrow win over Australia, Taiwan now have a chance to advance if South Korea also beat the Aussies Taiwan has high hopes that the national baseball team would advance to the World Baseball Classic (WBC) quarter-finals after clinching a crucial 5-4 victory over South Korea in a nail-biting extra-inning game at the Tokyo Dome yesterday. Boosted by three home runs — two solo shots by Yu Chang (張育成) and Cheng Tsung-che (鄭宗哲) and a two-run homer by Stuart Fairchild — the triumph gave Taiwan a much-needed second victory in the five-team Pool C, where only the top two finishers would advance to the knockout stage in Miami, Florida. Entering extra innings with the game tied at four apiece, Taiwan scored
MISSION OF PEACE: The foreign minister urged Beijing to respect Taiwan’s existence as an independent nation, and work together to ensure peace and stability in the region Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) yesterday rejected Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi’s (王毅) comments about Taiwan, criticizing China as a “troublemaker” in the international community and a disruptor of cross-strait peace. Speaking at a news conference on the sidelines of the Chinese National People’s Congress, Wang said that Taiwan has always been a territory of China and that it would be impossible for it to become its own country. The “return” of Taiwan to China was the natural outcome of the Chinese people’s resistance against Japan in World War II, and that any pursuit of independence was “doomed
RSS