By Andy Rose

(CNN) — Newly released data from ground-based radar came out Tuesday suggesting an Army helicopter was higher than it was supposed to be when it collided with American Airlines Flight 5342 a week ago, killing all 67 people aboard both aircraft.

According to the “best quality flight track data” available, the helicopter was flying at about 300 feet at the time of the midair collision with the plane on its approach to Reagan National Airport outside Washington, DC, according to a statement Tuesday evening from the National Transportation Safety Board. “This data is rounded to the nearest 100 feet,” the agency said.

The Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk, based at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, was flying a training mission in a dedicated helicopter route where it was not allowed to fly above 200 feet, according to a published FAA chart. Since the accident above the Potomac River, the Federal Aviation Administration has indefinitely suspended the use of most of those routes.

Tuesday’s update from the NTSB doesn’t fully clarify an already murky situation. Although the air traffic control display at Reagan National should have shown the Black Hawk was flying at about 300 feet, the agency said it is continuing to collect data on its position, work that will not be finished until the helicopter wreckage can be pulled from the water. That is not expected to happen until next week.

Conflicting information about what controllers saw

NTSB board member J. Todd Inman stated over the weekend the airport tower’s radar was showing the Black Hawk altitude at 200 feet with the Bombardier CRJ700 jet’s flight data recorder reading 325 feet, a discrepancy that investigators could not immediately explain.

The NTSB canceled previously announced news briefings on their investigation on Monday and Tuesday and has not made officials available for questions on the Tuesday evening update.

Black boxes containing the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder from both aircraft have been recovered. The NTSB says they are still working to synchronize the recordings, but board chair Jennifer Homendy told CNN’s Pete Muntean on Monday they will release what they can when they can.

“Every piece of the information is critical to the investigation, and the NTSB is about transparency,” she said.

Officials have warned against a rush to judgment on the cause of the deadliest US aviation disaster since TWA Flight 800 in 2001. Still, figuring out how high the Army helicopter was at the time of the collision is considered key to determining how two aircraft flying in one of the nation’s most heavily regulated airspace corridors under clear skies could run directly into each other.

President Donald Trump did not wait for an investigative report before weighing in.

“The Blackhawk helicopter was flying too high, by a lot,” the president posted last Friday on Truth Social. “It was far above the 200 foot limit. That’s not really too complicated to understand, is it?”

The newly released altitude information was collected by Potomac TRACON, the air traffic control unit that coordinates aircraft arrivals and departures at multiple airports in the region, including Dulles International in Virginia and Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. That facility, located about 40 miles west of Reagan National, uses information from multiple radar sensors and telemetry transmitted from aircraft to pinpoint their positions, according to the NTSB.

Investigators piecing plane back together

The recovery of the jet wreckage from the Potomac continued Wednesday as weather conditions deteriorated in Washington. The NTSB says they have already removed most key pieces of the plane, including most major components of the wings as well as the tail and “significant portions of the forward cabin and cockpit.”

The wreckage was transferred, one piece at a time, from a barge to a flatbed truck parked only a couple of hundred feet from the airport’s main runway.

It is being transported to a secure hangar where it will be pieced back together for examination. The recovery of the helicopter will not begin until the wreckage of the jet is removed from the water, the NTSB said.

Crews have recovered all 67 victims, officials said Tuesday.

A preliminary report on the cause of the crash is expected within 30 days. A final report can take over a year, but the NTSB chair says they hope this investigation won’t take that long.

“I would hope it would be much less than that,” Homendy said.

This story has been updated with additional information.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.