- A jet operated by American Airlines collided with a Black Hawk helicopter in Washington, DC.
- Investigators on Thursday said they recovered the black boxes from the passenger jet.
- Black boxes can provide key data from moments before the impact.
Investigators recovered the recording devices, or black boxes, from one of the aircraft involved in Wednesday night’s midair crash near the Reagan Washington National Airport.
A spokesperson for the National Transportation Safety Board, which is overseeing the probe into the crash, told Business Insider in an email that the “cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder” from the Bombardier CRJ700 airplane operated by American Airlines was recovered.
“The recorders are at the NTSB labs for evaluation,” the spokesperson said.
Blackboxes provide key pieces of data that can help investigators determine what happened before the moment of impact.
The cockpit voice recorder “records radio transmissions and sounds in the cockpit, such as the pilot’s voices and engine noises,” according to the NTSB. “The other, the Flight Data Recorder (FDR), monitors parameters such as altitude, airspeed and heading.”
The collision between a passenger jet and a military helicopter occurred in one of the most congested airspaces in the US, BI reported.
Sixty-seven people — including four crew members and 60 passengers aboard the CRJ700 and three Black Hawk crew members — were presumed dead.
For years, aviation experts have warned of the risks of midair collisions amid air traffic controller staffing shortages and an increasingly congested airspace.
This is a developing story, check back for more information.
