Black Hawk black box and two from American Airlines plane recovered

Officials have recovered a black box voice recorded from a Black Hawk helicopter and two from an American Airlines plane that collided and killed 67.

National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) officials on Friday evening said the helicopter black box did not have signs of external damage.

‘The Sikorsky has a combined cockpit voice recorder and digital flight data recorder,’ said NTSB board member Todd Inman. ‘I can report to you now that we have recovered the Sikorsky black box.’

Two black boxes from the regional jet have also been found and are being examined at the NTSB’s laboratory. Water from the Potomac River entered one of the devices. the cockpit voice recorder was soaked in ionized water overnight and placed in a vacuum.

‘It is one step of many steps that we will take in order to get that data, but we have a very high level of confidence that we will have it,’ said Inman. ‘We just have to work through a number of steps.’

Two new videos obtained by CNN are the most detailed yet in showing the horrifying crash between an American Airlines plane and a Black Hawk helicopter.

In one clip released on Friday morning, the helicopter can be seen flying over the Potomac River from the left side as the passenger jet descends from the right side. After an explosion, both aircrafts are seen falling into the water.

The second video appears to be shot from Ronald Reagan National Airport and shows the two aircrafts colliding head-on from a distance across the runways, and spinning into the river.

NBC News has confirmed that an air traffic control supervisor at Reagan Airport let a controller leave their shift early before a plane crash killed 67 people.

It comes after US media obtained an initial report from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) which found staffing levels were ‘not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic’ before the fatal plane and helicopter collision.

Two roles – coordinating helicopter traffic and coordinating arriving and departing planes – had been combined into one. Two people were reportedly handling the jobs of four inside the control tower at Reagan National Airport.

However, the two jobs are usually combined when controllers need a break or are doing a shift change – so the ‘not normal’ staffing levels could be attributed to a shift change or work break.

Authorities are still searching for answers to what caused the most deadly air disaster in America since 2001.

There were no survivors when the American Airlines flight collided with a US Army Black Hawk helicopter near Ronald Reagan National Airport late last night.

Even in peak conditions, pilots must navigate notoriously busy skies filled with hundreds of other commercial planes, military aircraft and restricted areas around sensitive sites, with the White House just five miles away.