According to a New York Times report, staffing was thin in the control tower at Reagan National Airport, where the airliner was about to land when the collision occurred.
One controller, rather than the usual two, was handling both plane and helicopter traffic, the Times quoted a preliminary Federal Aviation Administration report as saying.
A fireball erupted in the night sky and both aircraft tumbled into the icy Potomac, leaving rescue crews with the grim, difficult task of searching for bodies in the dark and cold.
Washington Fire Chief John Donnelly said 28 corpses had been recovered so far.
Trump politicizes crash
Trump, who took office 10 days ago, turned a press conference on the disaster into a platform for his crusade against diversity, equity and inclusion or DEI — a series of often decades-old measures meant to combat racism and sexism across the United States.
Accusing his Democratic predecessors Joe Biden and Barack Obama of having kept good employees out of the aviation agency in pursuit of DEI, he claimed: “They actually came out with a directive: ‘too white.’ And we want the people that are competent.”
The passenger plane was carrying 64 people and the Black Hawk had three aboard.
The collision — the first major crash in the United States since 2009 when 49 people were killed near Buffalo, New York — occurred as American Eagle Flight 5342 from Wichita, Kansas came in to land.
Reagan National is a major airport located a short distance from downtown Washington, the White House and the Pentagon. The airspace is extremely busy, with civilian and military aircraft a constant presence.
