ntsb chair jennifer homendy says, and tried to avoid this collision. apparently, it was a futile job that they tried to do, and all 67 people perished in this very sad crash. >> pete muntean, thank you so much for the update. live from ntsb headquarters, brianna. >> let's get some expert analysis from cnn aviation analyst peter goelz. he's the former managing director of the ntsb. peter, really interesting here. obviously, a strong possibility. the blackhawk crew was wearing night vision goggles. and then there's multiple instances we learned where they may not have heard the full transmission from air traffic control, including when the crew was told to pass behind the passenger jet passed behind the. those key words may not have been received by the blackhawk crew. the instructor pilot telling the pilot flying. they believe that air traffic control was asking for the helicopter to move left towards the east bank of the potomac. your takeaway from learning those things? >> well, brianna, this press conference was chock full of new information and info

take a listen to the ntsb chair jennifer homendy. >> the pilot flying indicated they were at 300 feetstructor pilot indicated they were at 400 feet. neither pilot made a comment discussing the altitude discrepancy. at this time, we don't know why there was a discrepancy between the two. >> reporter: that goes along with some of the data they've taken out of the black box, the helicopter they found to be invalid, incorrect. so they don't know if it was recorded improperly or if the helicopter was giving bad info to the pilots. the other thing that really stands out here is two critical air traffic control communications two messages to the pilots of the black hawk appear to have not fully been received by the helicopter. one of them was when they were telling the helicopter that the plane was circling to another runway and then just 17 seconds before disaster, where they give them instructions on what to do with the plane to pass behind it some of that message didn't get there either. take a listen. >> data from the black hawk indicated that the portion of the transmission that stated

. >> jennifer homendy jonathan kersley. >> from. channel nine australia. you touched on it briefly before. you're dealing. >> with two major. >> accidents now. >> two. >> major collisions in the space of a couple of days. how do you deal with that? >> well, the question is, how do we deal with two major collisions in a span of days? we are a very small federal agency. most people aren't aware that we only have 436 employees at the ntsb, and that spans all modes of transportation for aviation safety. we have a number of investigators because our mandate is to do quite more than the other modes of transportation, where we're doing every civil aviation accident in the united states. we also do serve as accredited representative for foreign investigations as well. so in this case, we had to have a highly skilled team focused on certain areas that are at dca for that plane crash. and then we have a number of other investigators that are not on call for that crash that we can deploy here. >> just as a follow up to that, to. are you adequately resourced as an org

pete, you just interviewed ntsb chair jennifer homendy, who's investigating, obviously. what happened? what more do we know about what happened? well, the. >> salvage and recovery. >> effort will be. >> key to the ntsb investigation. we just heard from salvage and recovery crews, and they made two major finds. >> today using. >> the floating crane equipment behind me. not only a fully intact jet. engine from american airlines flight 5342, but they also recovered a large, jagged piece of fuselage. we know that those parts will go from here to a hangar on reagan national airport, where investigators will essentially begin laying those parts out to essentially try and find blind spots to the pilots of american flight 5342 and the pilots of the black hawk helicopter. we did not get a briefing from the ntsb today, although i did speak exclusively with ntsb chair jennifer homendy, and she tells me investigators right now are not only going through the flight data recorder. data from american flight 5342 and the cockpit voice recorder, but they have recovered a cockpit and data

. >> ntsb chair jennifer homendy tells me she has launched 100 investigators to this crash. their latest focus downloading data from the black box recorder on the army blackhawk helicopter and lining it up with what investigators already recovered from american flight 5342. that data shows the pilots tried to climb one second before the crash. >> every piece of information is critical to the investigation. so when we can provide that, i think that will be helpful to provide some additional context. and what we're looking at in this investigation. >> crews armed with cranes made more grim discoveries monday, spending hours removing a jagged portion of fuselage from the water. slow salvage work that could take more than a week to complete. >> tomorrow our goal is going to be the cockpit. that goal may be impacted tomorrow by a couple of environmental. >> conditions, notably. >> the wind. >> the ntsb says parts from the potomac will be brought to a hangar here and laid out to evaluate the angle of the collision. investigators are also looking at whether air traffic controllers

we did not hear from ntsb chair jennifer homendy, although she briefed the committee, along with key officials from the faa. the faa did make a little bit of news today ahead of this, saying that they were going to reduce the rate of aircraft arrivals at national airport. right now, it's set at 28 per hour. remember, very congested airspace. they're going to reduce that to 26 per hour. the flip side of that is that it will make delays a little bit worse. the average delay now about 40 minutes. it goes up by about 10 minutes to 50 minutes. the other thing here that you have to set this against the backdrop of is that the trump administration has really used this for an opening to start the discussion about air traffic control and changing air traffic control. and we know that elon musk last night tweeted that he wanted to essentially have doge plug in to the air traffic control system, and said he wanted to make rapid upgrades to the air traffic control system. the faa doesn't do things fast very well, and so that sort of has really kicked off this whole new conversation about what do

and ntsb chair jennifer homendy says it's a slow manual process.re going to try and corroborate that data with the data from the commercial airliner, and they're having to line up those timestamps. but it's very slow and very meticulous. >> and pete, there's been a recovery update. what are you hearing from unified command? >> we've heard today that they have recovered all 67 bodies. remember a major human toll with this crash. they've positively identified 66 of those bodies. the big challenge now for recovery crews is the fact that the weather is going to significantly change here. it was about 60 degrees here in d.c. today. the winds were heavy, although they were able to make some pretty big progress now. winter weather is moving in tomorrow. i just heard from a source here at the airport that they're going to still try and do a lot of work tomorrow by taking parts of american 5342 at high tide on barges and then moving them on to flatbed trucks and then into a hangar here so investigators can continue their work. >> and, pete, quickly, if you

although ntsb chair jennifer homendy says it's not totally clear if the crew was referencing that instrument or using the standard altimeter that is used that reads air pressure. and i want you to listen now to how she explained this to me, that this may have been a discrepancy. and it's something that the ntsb is now looking into. >> i think that's going to take a significant amount of work. i mean, we have a very experienced team in the recorders lab. i'm very impressed with their work, but it's going to take some time. they're going to have to work with manufacturers of the equipment, the army and others to really understand what was going on. >> is it possible here that the black hawk crew did not have the holistic, full picture of what altitude they were actually at? >> it's certainly possible. and that's something we're looking at. >> one more major finding here that radio transmissions from the air traffic control tower at reagan national airport may have actually been missed in some cases by the crew of the black hawk helicopter, specifically, an instruction from the tower to the hel

but ntsb chair jennifer homendy told me she still needs to have her investigators account for that altitude discrepancy earlier in the flight, and the crew may have not had a full and accurate picture of their altitude at the time of the crash. listen to what she told me. >> i think that's going to. >> take a significant. amount of work. >> i mean. >> we have a. very experienced. >> team in the recorders lab. i'm very impressed with their work, but it's going to take some time. >> they're going. >> to have to. >> work with. >> manufacturers of the equipment. >> the. >> army and others to really understand. >> what was going on. >> is it possible here that the black hawk crew did not have the holistic, full picture of what altitude they were actually at? >> it's certainly possible. and that's something we're looking at. >> one more major finding here, jake, that some of the radio transmissions from the controllers in the tower at reagan national airport may have not been heard by the crew of that black hawk helicopter. the ntsb was able to figure this out by playing back the voice recorder.

i want you to listen now to what ntsb chair jennifer homendy told me just yesterday in an exclusive interview. she said, that is very manual work right now that investigators are doing to line up the timestamps on the data recorder from the black hawk to the timestamps of the data recorder on the american airlines jet. listen. >> every piece of information is critical to the investigation. and so the ntsb is about transparency. so when we can provide that i think that will be helpful to provide some additional context. and what we're looking at in this. investigation. >> flights are taking off and landing here again at reagan national airport. in fact, they're using the approach today. that was originally the approach that american flight 5342 was lined up on. and then the plane was told by the control tower to switch to runway 33 here. that runway is closed. we know from american airlines. and a memo sent out to all of its employees yesterday that it is welcome news, according to american, that the helicopter corridor that was in use here is at least temporarily closed by the federal aviatio

held a press conference to deliver an update on the deadly collision over the potomac chair jennifer homendyailed communications between the blackhawk and air traffic control, suggesting a crucial message may not have been heard by the blackhawk pilot. >> at eight, 47, 42, or 17 seconds before impact, a radio transmission from the tower was audible on both cvr directing the blackhawk to pass behind the crj. cvr data from the blackhawk indicated that the portion of the transmission that stated pass behind the may not have been received by the blackhawk crew. transmission was stepped on by a point eight second mic key from the blackhawk. >> joining us now nbc news correspondent erin mclaughlin. so erin, give us a little bit more about what you learned today. >> well, this was a critical update, katie, from the ntsb. you know, they've been spending the last 15 days compiling a detailed timeline of exactly what happened down to the split second prior to that collision. and now the ntsb says they are looking at the possibility that the crew on board the blackhawk was operating off of bad data, an

an ntsb chair, jennifer homendy, just spoke to reporters after briefing members of the house, and sheaid it's still not clear if that equipment was installed on the helicopter. listen. >> we believe there are. >> avionics on. the on the helicopter. >> that we. >> need to evaluate in. order to determine what they did have. and what was on at the time. so more to come. >> but do we know for sure that. sorry. dave shepardson from reuters. but do we know that ads-b was installed on the helicopter? >> we don't know that. at this. >> time. >> that assessment. >> may soon change now that recovery crews have removed the helicopter from the potomac river. that is key because investigators have also been waiting to get information from inside the wreckage so they can finally release the early findings from the craft's onboard data and voice recorder. right now, it is clear what happened. the collision occurred at 325ft. that's above the 200 foot altitude restriction for the helicopter corridor near national airport, something lawmakers told me today. they want to hear more from the faa about. r

i asked ntsb chair jennifer homendy an exclusive interview today whether or not that route should remainrmanently. and this is what she told me. >> at any. >> time, the ntsb can issue an urgent safety recommendation. we don't have to wait till the end. and if we see there's a need, we'll do it. >> do you think there will be an urgent recommendation out of this? >> i don't know, i think it's too early right now for me to say that. my hope is we don't have to issue an urgent safety recommendation because we could get voluntary action. >> american airlines 5342. that flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder is being reviewed by the ntsb. also, the ntsb is reviewing a data and voice recorder of combined function from the black hawk helicopter. they say it is water logged. they have not been able to download all the video yet, and they are manually lining up the timestamps from that data recorder with the timestamps from on board. american 5342. they say they could have some of the early findings from that black hawk data tomorrow. phil. >> very important exclusive interview. pete munt

jennifer homendy, the chair of the national transportation safety board briefing members of congress about the progress of the investigation. senator ted cruz, who was at the briefing, revealing critical technology that would have allowed air traffic controllers to better track the movement of the chopper, was turned off at the time of the collision. the technology known as automatic dependent surveillance broadcast or adsb broadcasts position, altitude and speed. >> in this instance, it was a training mission, so there was no compelling national safety reason for it to be turned off. >> reporter: some changes are being made while the investigation continues. the faa notifying that traffic at reagan airport will be reduced by two flights an hour out of concern for air traffic controllers. while the faa reviews other airports with high volumes of helicopter and airplane traffic nearby. the ntsb chair saying the faa can make changes immediately as concerns pop up in their probe. >> they can see it in real-time and make safety change. >> reporter: meanwhile, aviation system is outdated

jennifer homendy said friday that pass behind may not have been received based on its review of the blackhawk'sockpit voice recorder, which did not capture those words. the helicopter crew had activated its microphone at that moment to communicate with air traffic control. larry is in pontus, ohio on our line for republicans. good morning, a. -- good morning, a. -- leah read. caller: good morning, how are you? i did not support donald trump. i do support my senators and my congressman that a republican. but him cap abandoning ukraine goes against everything this country stands for. and to kiss up to vladimir putin and north korea and all of that stuff and abandon our allies in europe that we stood with since world war i is ridiculous, and he should be tried for being a traitor. thank you. host: larry was mentioning president trump's stance on ukraine and on wednesday president trump answered questions about a conversation he had with president vladimir putin of russia. here is that exchange. >> do you plan on meeting with vladimir putin? and whether any preconditions? pres. trump: no, we had a

jennifer homendy said friday that pass behind may not have been received based on its review of the blackhawk'sockpit voice recorder, which did not capture those words. the helicopter crew had activated its microphone at that moment to communicate with air traffic control. larry is in pontus, ohio on our line for republicans. good morning, a. -- good morning, a. -- leah read. caller: good morning, how are you? i did not support donald trump. i do support my senators and my congressman that a republican. but him cap abandoning ukraine goes against everything this country stands for. and to kiss up to vladimir putin and north korea and all of that stuff and abandon our allies in europe that we stood with since world war i is ridiculous, and he should be tried for being a traitor. thank you. host: larry was mentioning president trump's stance on ukraine and on wednesday president trump answered questions about a conversation he had with president vladimir putin of russia. here is that exchange. >> do you plan on meeting with vladimir putin? and whether any preconditions? pres. trump: no, we had a