55 victims of DC collision identified

Fifty-five victims of the Wednesday collision near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport between an American Airlines plane and Army Black Hawk helicopter “[have] been positively identified,” according to a local official.

“During our salvage surveys in preparation to lift the aircraft, additional remains were located and removed from the river and taken to the medical examiner's office,” said D.C. Fire and Emergency Medical Services Chief John Donnelly during a Sunday crash-focused update.

“So far, 55 victims [have] been positively identified … from this … accident,” he added.

Sixty passengers and four crew members were on the American Airlines flight, and three soldiers were on the military helicopter. Emergency response crews previously said they did not expect to find any survivors.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said on Sunday that the U.S. has “the safest airspace in the world” in the wake of the National Airport-area collision. 

“We have the safest airspace in the world, and air travel is the safest form of travel that you can undertake in the country,” Duffy told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.” “Now we’ve seen some cracks, and it rattles people when they see these disasters.”

Duffy also said ensuring “people get from point A to point B as intended, safely, is our mission, and that’s going to be ramped up under this administration, and it’s mission-critical for the American people.”

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has recovered the flight data recorders for the aircraft involved in the D.C.-area crash, the agency said Thursday.

“NTSB investigators recovered the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder from the Bombardier CRJ700 airplane involved in yesterday’s mid-air collision at DCA,” the NTSB said on the social platform X. “The recorders are at the NTSB labs for evaluation.”