survivors of the american airlines passenger jet. flight aa 5342. it's operated by psa airlines, which collided with a united states army blackhawk helicopter near ronald

reagan national airport in washington, dc. the passenger jet was heading from washington, heading to washington. it was about to land. it had flown in from wichita, kansas. the news last hour. emergency crews had recovered at least 12 bodies, with the total figure recovered nearing 20, according to nbc news. washington the moment of the collision was captured. now take a look. it will be right around the middle of your screen. there it is. see the bright light in the middle of your screen? now you see a light coming up to it on its left. now watch what happens. and that's the collision. time is of the essence right now because it's cold in the potomac river. that's where both planes have gone down. one of the planes, the fixed wing aircraft, the cg 400, the american airlines aircraft, is in two pieces, and it is submerged in about seven feet of water. the other aircraft, the helicopter, is upside down in the water. they're believed to be three people on that, 60 passengers and four crew on the american airlines jet. that's what we

know for now. the divers are in the water. the search and rescue continues. they are said to be at least 300 people involved in the search and rescue right now. and that's the stage we're at right now. some people have posted on the internet and including the president of the united states, some speculation as to what happened. we're probably a little early for speculation as to what happened. but there there's an investigation. there will be ntsb investigators on the ground on the way. now. they pack their bags. they will probably be be there by sun up. joining us now is alan deal. he is a former investigator for the national transportation safety board who has water rescue expertise. alan, thanks for being with us. talk to me about you know, this is one of the difficulties of being an ntsb investigator because you have to determine whether something went wrong that is either serious or replicable, because you may have the investigators may have within hours to have to put out a directive to say, hold on.

we've determined there's a problem in some process or procedure needs to change immediately. but generally speaking, it's a more deliberate process than that. so what's the first thing that has to happen while there's still a recovery mission going on? >> well, obviously they want to support the people doing the recovery. and we understand the human needs to help the relatives and other people who are grieving. but as soon as that is over and the bodies have been removed, or survivors, if it happens by some miracle, they go to work. the ntsb people go to work with the help of the faa, and in this case, they'll be army. also army personnel also assisting with this. i work for the pentagon as well as the ntsb and the faa. and as a matter of fact, i worked on the 82 crash there of the air florida crash. and, of course, that was in the daytime, very different circumstances. but the

board will be there bright and early in the morning leading the investigation. but the first thing they've got to do is let the recovery effort take place. they'll obviously want to get the two black boxes from the airliner and look at the air traffic control tapes, both the audio tapes and the radar tapes. and they'll begin to look at the training of the army pilots as well as the airline pilots, and they'll look for any evidence that there was a mechanical failure. captain, last hour talked about the collision warning system. they will examine to see whether or not the altitude was such that that would have given some kind of warning. but apparently the and i say apparently i'm speculating that the helicopter was instructed to cross behind the airliner, and at night it's very difficult, as we all know, to spot other aircraft. first of all, especially against a

background of city lights. so all those things will, will, will come out in future days and weeks and months. >> yeah. you pointed out a lot of things and we i'd like to play that audio, but i don't want to play it until we have gone through our verification process to make sure that we know that that's that audio. but there is talk out there that that air traffic control court spoke to what they call pat 25. that's what the sikorsky, the black hawk one says. do you have this aircraft in your sight? and if they say so, they should go behind it. that is typical in, in in flying. right. that that air traffic control, they see two planes in close proximity to each other. they want to know that the planes see each other and then they give them some direction. but to your point, much harder to do than it sounds, because an aircraft seen from the side at night in a in a bright city is not as obvious as

you'd think. it is. absolutely right, ali. and of course, if you look at your videotape there, there's another aircraft up in the air. i don't know where it is in relation to the airliner and the helicopter. you can see the helicopter, what appears to be the helicopter approaching from the north. and of course, you see the flash. >> i'm going to just ask. i'm going to ask. there we go. let's play that video again. we're looking at the one in the middle. that's the aircraft that we're talking about those that's the collision that you just saw. but there was another aircraft right before that. see that there's an aircraft right on top of that. that's common. >> maybe again, speculation is it possible that the army aviators thought that was the plane that they were trying to cross behind which it looks it appears that they were well behind that plane at the top of your screen, but not, unfortunately, not behind the regional jets. so all of this will come out. i'm an aviation psychologist, among among other things, and we have to look at

visual illusions and just what these two crews were faced with. the ntsb. i know senator duckworth said, that the visibility of the black hawk is very good. and of course it is. and so, so is it out of the regional jet i haven't flown the crash, but they both have good out of cockpit visibility. but what the ntsb will do in future weeks is actually do what they call an optometric study. so they'll see if there was something in the structure, for example, of the black hawk that may have prevented them from seeing the rj. now i'm again, i'm i'm not saying there was, but that's what the ntsb would be will do meticulously over the next few weeks. >> so this is you bring up some important points because when you put all these things together and you find out what, what's going on, passengers are going to worry about their flying. and there are the crj

1700. the rj 700 used to be made by bae. canadair became bombardier. now it's mitsubishi, but this one would have been a bombardier model because it's only been mitsubishi for a couple of years. this is a 70 seater plane. it's very common as a regional jet. it's got a pretty good safety record actually. the again, we don't want to speculate because we don't know because the ntsb investigators will get to the bottom of this thing. but what do you say to people who might be thinking i'm booked on one of these things? >> well, holly, as i say in my books, you know, when and it's a cliche, the most dangerous part of your your trip is going to be the drive to the airport. that's literally true. you've got something like 1 in 10,000,000 chances of being killed in an airliner accident. try to get those kind of odds from your surgeon. next time you you go in to visit him. it's amazingly

safe. and, captain tiegs, i thought last hour did a great job of explaining all about all the layers of the sympathy, sympathy of safety, as he called it, which i like that term. i've used it myself. but yeah, it's we shouldn't panic over this. you're well aware that the last major crash in the u.s. was in oh nine, in buffalo, with a regional aircraft of dash eight. i guess it was that lost control and crashed on landing a single aircraft involvement. interestingly enough, there was an accident much like this at the national airport in 1949. an eastern dc four was landing and it was hit by a bolivian fighter plane taking off from bolling air force base, which was an active base back then. so about 50 people died not far from where this current accident occurred. so, you know, it's

been it's been a long, long while since i think there's been another mid-air at national. and it goes to show just how safe this system is. >> you talked about that crash in, in in buffalo. it was a continental at the time. i think it was a continental regional flier. >> yeah. >> and yeah. right. colgan. colgan. and but lessons were taken from that. there was some bad weather. it was a relatively inexperienced pilot who had flown across the country because that was, you know, how you had to make money as a pilot. i think she was based in the west coast or something, and probably had flown in on a ups flight or something like that. and so we do learn from these investigations, whether it's training or whether it's equipment or whether it's pulling planes off the line or whether it's separation between planes. the sad but but good truth is that these things happen rarely in america. and when they do happen, never does nothing come of it. never do we not get better at at flying in

safety in that symphony of safety? >> yeah. they say these lessons are written in blood, and they do incorporate the changes once they learn what went wrong. for example, pilot fatigue. you pointed out about the first officer having to deadhead across the country and probably couldn't even afford a motel room because in those days, and probably the day the first officers were paid so little that, you know, they slept in the lounges and then took that flight. so we knew that happened. we also know that that's when they established the 1500 hour rule, so that even copilots had to have an airline transport pilot license, which requires 1500 hours. now, there's a few exceptions for military pilots and graduates of four year colleges. but we you know, we beefed up the pilot training requirement. we also looked at something called crew resource management many years ago, in 1978, i investigated an

accident, a united crash in portland, oregon, and wrote the first recommendation, ntsb recommendation to do that. and we see that these kind of training changes and experience requirements, as well as the technology has drastically reduced the accident rate. i can remember when i first went to work for the ntsb, every, every 3 or 4 weeks, there was a major crash. and, you know, now it's several years, decades, actually, between these major crashes. now, we're having a lot of incidents involving air traffic control that need to be and are being carefully investigated. but that's what the new faa administrator will have to look at the manning levels in the various facilities of the faa, as well as the new technology. they've talked about ai, artificial intelligence, maybe being applicable to some of these problems. so we're going to have to look at what

happened. the ntsb will do that very carefully. with the help of the faa and the pentagon, and see if we can't figure out what went wrong here and, more importantly, what we can do to prevent the next incident or accident. >> and this new faa administrator, sean duffy, by the way, is well regarded. come on the job. and he's got his hands full. you mentioned air traffic control. the president's already posted about this today. i'm always hesitant to like there's no reason for a hot take on this. we can figure it out. that said, everybody knows air traffic control workers have always been. it's a super high stress job. i always remember in the air, thinking the stuff they do is more complicated than than flying the plane. in many cases, they're busier than they've ever been. they we have a demand as passengers to have more planes flying and more planes taking off. planes take off closer to each other than they ever have. the separation between planes is closer than it's ever been. and that's sort of the market saying

we need more planes in the air. talk to me about how you think about about that, because it's sort of easy to cast blame. but we need solutions rather than blame. >> well, the hope is that some of the automation that's been coming online, various warning lights at intersections, this is to prevent ground collisions, not necessarily in-flight collisions. but we've we've found airlines getting on the wrong runway not being cleared. and several days ago there was a case where an airline pilot, not a controller, literally told another airliner to go around. he realized that that plane was landing on the runway where his airliner was located. so he he that's what we call crew resource management. we now empower people to speak up if they see something wrong. you speak up. it's called authority with participation, assertiveness with respect. and we started out training the copilots and flight engineers

that you are obligated to correct the captain. if you see him making a mistake, he or she makes a mistake. you speak up and of course the captain empowers you to do that. now we're doing that with air traffic controllers. and so the whole industry has learned how to share information and speak up. if you see something wrong. now, we don't know what happened. you know, yesterday in this terrible situation there on the potomac. but i'm sure that will be something else that the ntsb will carefully look at. did anybody aboard those aircraft are in the control cab have a, you know, have a concern that maybe they didn't speak up? maybe we need to revisit crm for controllers. >> that's crew resource management. all right, alan, stand by. alan is a former national transportation safety board investigator. as you can tell, he knows a lot about these things. we're going to take a quick break. our coverage will continue in just a moment. >> to avoid digital threats. >> just turn on.

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have. some audio is trickling in over the course of this incident in which two aircraft collided right next to washington national airport. there'll be some imagery that you can see, which indicates there are a couple of planes on on the screen, and you will see one smaller plane approaching a plane in the middle of your screen, and then you will see a collision. the audio makes sense when you're watching that. let's play this. >> of course, and see about that number. (472) 103-2017. one. >> you see that 472. america. 1250 3000. >> as you saw it in the middle of your screen, there's an

aircraft coming toward the runway. and then you see an explosion. you see you will see there's an aircraft. take a look at that. the big one in the middle of the screen is there is the american airlines plane. look at the thing on the left just about to approach it. and that's the explosion that appears to be from what we know now. and again, this is early hours. so we don't know fully from what we now know now the a military aircraft, a blackhawk from fort belvoir on a training mission seemed to have flown, seems to have flown into american airlines 5342, which is operated by psa airlines. it's a crj 700 aircraft. it was coming in from wichita. it was seconds from landing on runway three three at dc's national airport. joining us again is joseph olmo. he's an nbc news four reporter. he's near the ronald reagan national airport. he's been covering this for the last few hours. joseph, just to be clear, the rescue operation, which

they're still calling a rescue operation, which implies that they're looking for survivors, is still underway. we know that more than a dozen bodies have been recovered. the number may be more than that. we do not know of survivors as of yet. is that correct? >> we do not know. so i have to check my phone here. 222 eastern time. right now, about an hour, hour and a half ago, we got our first media briefing, our first press conference since this crash happened at 9:00 last night. and the mayor of washington, dc and several other officials were asked that very question. what is the update on survivors? what is the update on casualties, injuries, deaths? and there was a huge refrain from giving out any numbers other than a continuous push that the rescue efforts rescue,

which is a big difference. we talk about rescue and recovery like you just noted. rescue makes you believe that there's still hope that whatever they're out there looking for is whoever they're out there looking for is alive. recovery would mean, you know, they're still going to go and retrieve bodies, but they believe that everybody has passed. they use the word rescue, but they did not give any numbers. and that is going to be probably the top question that is asked to dc officials and those who are responding to this event. the next time that we get a media briefing, i'm watching here in front of me. it's going to be difficult to pan the camera around because of how dark it is. but yet another boat on the potomac river rushing back into washington, dc. let me step out of the way. for those of you who are watching around the world right now, this is reagan national airport, where you see the chunks of emergency lights flashing red. lights there, and there's a helicopter actually

flying right above us, a parked police helicopter. that's just one of many that have been flying, circling over the potomac river for hours now as this search, as this rescue operation continues. so that's reagan airport over there, washington national airport. but if we pan to the left here. thank you. photojournalist brooke merriweather here. if you pan to the left, you see these little pockets of flashing lights? that's all water. that's the potomac river there. so what is, you know, unclear right now because of how dark it is, is exactly where that american airlines plane or the blackhawk helicopter exactly are. but all the way down there, you see that line of white lights going across the horizon? that's the woodrow wilson bridge. it connects maryland to virginia. and you see, there's a lot of first responder presence there, a lot of boats and divers. that could very well be where the plane was, because that's only,

you know, a short distance away, a couple hundred feet away from the runway that this american airlines flight was, was set to land on. >> and this, you know, maybe if you live in san diego or las vegas, you sort of recognize an airport that's very, very close to the city. reagan airport is unique. it was originally built so that members of congress could get back and forth from their their district. it's minutes from the capitol. it is, it is it's a small footprint airport. it does have 5000 foot runway. so it can it can it can accommodate large planes. but it's a very small footprint runway that is on the water. it's on it's essentially on the potomac river. >> there are three runways at ronald reagan washington national airport, dca. and out of those three runways, there's really only one main runway that is used for your main line jets,

the 787 seconds and the airbus a320s and a321s. smaller jets like a crj, a regional jet, can land on one of the shorter runways, which is what this plane was, was, was doing. and it happens on a regular basis. and like you noted, i mean, dca is an interesting airport. if you look at it on a map, it's airport water, the potomac river and then big city washington dc and dca is not in a desert itself. in virginia, it's right next to alexandria, virginia and crystal city. it's just a couple streets away from the pentagon. so it's a unique airport. but the people, the pilots, the crews who fly into this airport, they it's just another day at the office for them. they they know how to operate in this congested airspace where i'm standing right now and the skies

above me, some of the most restricted airspace in the world, and not just the country, but the world. and so, you know, the immediate question is, are there any survivors? what's the number of fatalities, injuries we don't have? we don't have an answer there. but the long term question is what went wrong here in a very, very busy and congested airspace above washington, dc? what ultimately went wrong here? that is a question i know that the ntsb and the faa are going to be looking into because, as i've heard, some of the guests that you've had, that you've had prior to me coming on, you know, this doesn't happen in america like this scale of, of i don't want to say deadly yet because we don't have confirmed numbers yet, but this scale of a plane crash doesn't happen. in fact, we haven't had a major plane crash since 2009. a colgan air

flight where everybody on board unfortunately perished in that incident. and we tend to learn from those incidents and make new regulations and make new recommendations. the ntsb makes recommendations. so that way those incidents, those crashes don't happen again. and to be quite honest with you, we just don't have the answer right now. what ultimately caused a passenger jet landing at dca? something that happens hundreds of times every day, day and night to crash with a military helicopter that also, for those of you who are in washington dc, you know, there's helicopters. >> all the. time here. >> all. >> the. >> time flying across the potomac in and out of the city. >> that crash in 2009, the colgan that was in buffalo, it was in bad weather. it wasn't a jet. it was a it was one of those dehavilland prop planes. and it was a fatigued,

inexperienced pilot. and a lot of rules changed as a result of, of that crash. so in fact, that crash probably wouldn't emulate itself. so now we have to think about a whole bunch of other reasons why this would have happened. and you mentioned a couple of things that is super congested airspace, which is typical of urban airspace in america. it is also restricted airspace. it's not open to fliers without special training. generally speaking, that means commercial or military pilots. and there's military activity there as well. so there's a lot of layers. it's not that it's a complicated airport, but there's a lot of layers to the communication and coordination that's going on. one of my earlier guests described success in aviation as a symphony of safety. i suspect that's what they're going to hone into basic things, like who was communicating with whom, did the plane send the proper signals to each other? was somebody supposed to take evasive maneuvers? did air traffic control give the instructions that they were supposed to give?

it sounds like the good news is they may be able to get to this fairly quickly, to then go out and reassure the public that either something unusual happened here, or we're going to institute some new policies to make sure this doesn't repeat itself. the good thing about american air crashes is the same thing doesn't tend to happen twice. >> you know? and there's been such a talk in recent years with these close calls, these runway incursions, right. when an aircraft is set to take off or land on a runway and there's, there's an incursion, there's a vehicle, whether it be a car, an airport vehicle or another plane that crosses its path. and, you know, up until this point, those runway incursions have been called close calls because no crash has has happened. certainly nothing to this magnitude. this was not a runway incursion because this all happened mid-air. but as the

conversation continues on, on a lot of fronts, on air traffic control, how the airlines are staffed, it will be interesting to see. i don't want to speculate. it will be very interesting to see how the conversation evolves from tonight because like you mentioned the last time that i was on with you half an hour ago, you know, everybody has an opinion after a crash like this. and let's just. let's just remember the humanity in this, okay? >> yes. people. people have. >> 60 people, 60. no, 60 passengers. people have perished. 60 passengers, four crew, three people on the military helicopter. and you had family and friends coming to the airport who had no idea that this had even happened, thinking that they would pick up their loved one at the airport like any other flight. and now they're at that airport right behind me, facing an entirely different reality. >> yeah. that's right. no, but we will find out. we always find out what went wrong. we will find out what went wrong, and that will be fixed. but tonight is about the people who we are

still hoping that those those, those rescue workers may get out. they may get out. we're not hearing about that, unfortunately. but we still have a lot of people unaccounted for. and we will stay hopeful until we know more about that. joseph, your reporting is very helpful to us tonight. thank you. joseph olmo of nbc news for in washington. our coverage continues after this. we'll take a quick break. >> hi, grandma. i played baseball today. >> oh that's great. >> what position did you play? >> first base. that's what grandpa. >> used to play. >> when our hearing. >> wouldn't allow us to use a regular phone, it made us feel isolated. >> it became difficult to communicate. with our friends. >> and family. >> clear captions was an easy solution for us. >> clear captions provides captions on a phone. like captioning on your tv so you can see what the caller is saying live as they say it. >> making it easy to understand and respond immediately. >> there is no insurance or

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to cover the collision between two aircraft in washington, dc, including an american airlines crj 700 regional aircraft. it was american airlines 5342 that was inbound from wichita. it was supposed to land around 850 at 848. the crash happened. there was a skating championship. the world u.s. figure skating championships were held in wichita, kansas from january 20th to 26th. but some of the participants stayed a little longer to go to a the national development camp that went on until january 28th. we now have a statement from the u.s. figure skating association saying that some of their members were on that plane. u.s. figure skating can confirm that several members of our skating community were aboard american airlines flight 5342, which collided with a helicopter yesterday evening in washington, dc. these athletes, coaches and family members were returning home from the national development camp held in conjunction with the u.s. figure skating championships in

wichita, kansas. we're devastated by this unspeakable tragedy and hold the victims families close in our hearts. we will continue to monitor the situation and will release more information as it becomes available. that is all the information we have about anybody who was on the plane at the moment. right now, what we know is upward of a dozen bodies have been recovered. we do not know of any survivors on the plane. we have reports from some local hospitals in dc that they have not received any survivors. the officials in washington are still calling this a rescue effort. however, that's because it's nighttime and it's dark and they can't see everything. so they got boats out there shining lights. they've got helicopters shining lights in there to try and help people get a sense of what's going on. this is a dangerous rescue mission. it's cold. there are about 300 people involved in the rescue right now. it's right off of washington national airport. emergency officials held a press conference a couple of hours

ago. dc fire chief john donnelly had this to say. >> there's currently about 300 responders working. we have boats from all throughout the region, police and fire boats. we have a mutual aid agreement in washington dc, the national capital region mutual aid agreement administered by the metropolitan washington council of governments. and we are all operating under that. we're operating under a unified command. all everybody's together. so we also have requested state police helicopters from maryland. and the coast guard helicopter is working. so this is a state and federal response as well. u.s. coast guard's got some boats in the water as well. so it's a highly complex operation. the conditions out there are extremely rough for the responders. it's cold. the water that we're operating in is about eight feet deep. there is wind. there is pieces of ice out there. so it's just dangerous and hard to work in. and because there's not a lot of lights, you're out there searching every

square inch of space to see if you can find anybody. the divers are doing the same thing in the water. the water is dark, it is murky, and that is a very tough condition for them to dive in. >> the potomac river is not easy to see in in the middle of the day. in summer, it's not clear water to start with, so searching in the dark is a is an extra effort there. joining me now is edward kelly. he's the general president of the international association of firefighters. there are an awful lot of firefighters involved in this rescue. edward, what's your sense of what's going on right now? what have you heard? >> well, it's obviously a devastating and very sad evening in our nation's capital. and we have, as you heard, the chief just mentioned, it's a joint response from local, state and federal agencies. we have about 301st responders on the ground. we have d.c. fire. prince george's county fire department, we have the fairfax county fire department, the metro washington airport authority, fire

department on the ground. dive teams are in the water, and rescue efforts are underway. as you know, it's been hours since the crash and the water temperature is very cold. you mentioned the difficult conditions. it's dark, zero visibility. you're dealing with the current in this, the searching of the fuselage of the airplane, the cockpit, the helicopter, which we know the helicopter is actually from. reports are upside down. i know that some of the bodies that they have found inside the fuselage are very difficult extrications and it takes some time. so this is going to be an incident duration that's going on for quite some time. i have been in contact with secretary nolan from homeland security. they've made all available resources, including the coast guard, which is operating on scene right now, assisting in this effort. >> what's the edward what's the what's the biggest challenge here? you mentioned a lot of them. and obviously there's two aircraft in the water. which one of them split in half, which means there's jagged pieces of

metal all over the place, which complicates things. but the darkness seems to be the issue here. you are at this moment, still hoping for survivors who may be able to move around. they may be in a piece of the fuselage, but you can't see anything. >> yeah, i know that at this point, survivability will be truly divine. and i know that they have. i have identified some of the bodies that are on the fuselage of one of the aircraft that, as i mentioned, is going to be a very difficult extrication. it's going to take some time. but you know, the current, as i mentioned, the visibility, the debris that's been kicked up, it's a relatively shallow part of the river. about eight feet, as the chief mentioned. so all of that is disturbed. the, the, the, the silt of the river, which complicates the visibility as well. so there's a lot of

complicating factors. and it's actually a very dangerous search operation. so, you know, our goal is we want to get we want to make sure that we're doing everything in our power to get the loved ones back to their families. >> yeah, yeah. and of course you say a survivability is it would be divine at this point. but but part of what you all do as firefighters is you don't you don't give up until somebody tells you that, that there's nothing else left to do. so there's an urgency out there. this isn't a bunch of firefighters and rescue workers and divers just waiting for the sun to come up and saying, we'll, we'll sort this out in the morning. >> not at all. there's definitely there's a grid search going on right now. they have a large debris field. they have to, as i mentioned, the swift currents of the river would also create a much larger debris field. so they're working diligently to make sure that they're leaving no square inch

of that unsearched to try to find anybody that could potentially be alive, or, of course, to get their loved ones home to their families. >> what's your sense as you as you look at this, about what this will take to get some resolution. and i'm not talking about the investigation, i'm just talking about people getting their loved ones and their bodies back. >> well, i think as the sun comes up, they'll take to more aggressive actions to try to lift the fuselage, to make sure that they're doing. they can search every piece of it. so i think you'll see more of a removal operation for the actual aircraft that are down there. and i think that will assist with the recovery. >> edward kelly, thank you for you're in touch with the folks who are on the ground there. please send them our gratitude as a nation to those first responders. edward kelly is the president of the international

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various reports of more. but what we do know now from, from wrc is that a temporary morgue has been set up in southwest d.c, and bodies are now being transported by boat under tarps to that location. moments ago, we did report that u.s. figure skating has confirmed that several members of their skating community were above aboard american airlines flight 5342. they had been in wichita, kansas from the 20th to the 26th for a skating championships, and then some of them stayed longer for some development classes, and they were several of them on that flight that has crashed. that was american airlines flight 5342, operated by psa airlines. the aircraft was a crj 700. it's a regional jet. it seats about 70 people. there were 60 passengers on board with four crew. the other aircraft was an army blackhawk that had three members of the army on

that plane. both planes are in the water. the american airlines plane has been split in two. it's in about seven feet of water. the helicopter is upside down. also in the water. they're struggling. at the moment, about 300 rescue workers are struggling to try and find people. it's dark. the only lights you see are lights that are coming from the boats and the helicopters in the air that are putting lights onto us. joining us again is alan deal. he's a former investigator for the national transportation safety board. it's got obviously a great deal of aviation experience and a great deal of water rescue experience. alan, talk to me about this, this water rescue. we're not getting anything that sounds more hopeful. by the moment we are hearing about recovery, we're hearing about bodies. we are hearing from the hospitals in the region that no one has been transported to a hospital there. the job of the rescuers is to keep going while this is a recovery effort, but it's cold water and we haven't heard of

anybody being rescued alive yet. >> yeah, it's sad, obviously. you know, from all indications, the aircraft. impacted hard and people probably didn't suffer that. i guess that's certainly a blessing. and with the water temperatures the way they are, hypothermia would certainly have claimed any any temporary survivors. but yeah, the one of the most grisly things that will have to occur, we're going to do the not we, but the ntsb will be doing the autopsies, probably with the help of the armed forces institute of pathology on on the crew members. okay. that's required by law under federal law. so they will try to be looking for the, the people in uniform to rush them over to the, to the, to the morgue so they can perform those necessary

procedures. and of course, we don't expect to find it, but they're looking for everything from brain tumors to any kind of substance abuse. again, it's very rare that we find this in a crash, either military or airline. but we have to do it because that's the law. yeah. >> and i suppose that's the point, right? there may be a relatively simple explanation to what happened tonight, or it may be a confluence of things. you have investigated so many of these things and, you know, the history of so many more investigations that you weren't involved in. there is likely to come some sort of improvement as a result of this. over the last few years, people remember doris coming off airplanes, windows coming off airplanes, and sometimes they end up being recalled. but generally speaking, you learn something. any sense of what we're learning. so far, we only have video at the moment. and what it does seem to show is an aircraft. this american airlines plane seems to have been struck by a helicopter. what you're

looking at on the screen right now, not the plane that you're seeing on the top. see that thing? the big light in the middle? that's the american airlines plane. see the thing on the left that's approaching it? take a look at what's about to happen. now. that's your collision. the smaller aircraft looks like the helicopter. the bigger aircraft looks like the american airlines jet just from this. and i don't ask for speculation. what's your sense? >> well, you know, by all accounts, they were both talking to the controllers at reagan national. and of course, we're not. you know, we haven't confirmed the transcripts. and that's what the ntsb will do in the next several days. but it appears, you know, from other accounts that i've heard that the helicopter was told to cross behind the jetliner, the american airlines regional jet. and you saw on that picture there was another aircraft. >> let's run it again. i just want to show that again what you're talking about. i want to put that that video up again. so

as you're talking the viewer understands what you're talking about. there's an aircraft on the top of the screen. see that one that's not involved in the crash. but if the helicopter was told to pass behind the jet and they only saw that that jet at the top of the screen, the one on your right, they may have thought that they had passed behind it. >> that's what we'll have to determine. now, normally, blackhawks are not equipped with voice recorders, so unfortunately there may be some speculation. not speculation, but the investigators will have to try to establish whether or not that's what they, the military crew, was looking at right now. of course, we don't know that. i'm just looking at the evidence that we see and speculating. and of course, if i still work for the safety board, i wouldn't be doing this. but we're just trying to educate your viewers on what may have happened. and we shouldn't pretend to, you know, jump to any conclusions at this point. but that's one possibility. and as i explained last hour, one of

the things the ntsb will have to do is look at the out of cockpit view of the blackhawk. senator tammy duckworth, as a blackhawk pilot, was a blackhawk pilot. she said the visibility is great out of the blackhawk, but they do have vertical structures in that aircraft. and perhaps again, it's just speculating. ali, this is what the ntsb will have to establish whether or not a vertical structure blocked their view of the american airliner. and they were seeing that other target, that other plane in the air, just speculating. but that's the kind of thing the ntsb does. and what we find is we eliminate what didn't happen. you know, we talked about the authorities. we probably aren't going to find anything, but we have to go through those procedures. >> in order to get to the conclusion. alan, thanks very much. alan deal is a former investigator for the national transportation safety board. we appreciate you joining us for

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