Families visit crash site days after deadliest US air disaster in a generation

Families of victims of the deadliest US air disaster in nearly 25 years visited the crash site just outside of Washington DC on Sunday.

Dozens of people walked along the banks of the Potomac River near Reagan National Airport, close to where an American Airlines plane and an army Black Hawk helicopter collided on Wednesday, killing all 67 aboard.

They arrived in buses with a police escort, remembering loved ones as federal investigators work to piece together the events that led to the crash and recovery crews prepared to pull more wreckage from the chilly water, the Associated Press reports.

Transportation secretary Sean Duffy on Sunday said he wanted to leave federal aviation investigators space to conduct their inquiry.

But he posed a range of questions about the crash while appearing on morning TV news programmes.

“What was happening inside the towers? Were they understaffed/ The position of the Black Hawk, the elevation of the Black Hawk, were the pilots of the Black Hawk wearing night vision goggles?” Mr Duffy asked on CNN.

The American Airlines flight, with 64 people on board, was preparing to land from Wichita, Kansas. The army Black Hawk helicopter was on a training mission and had three soldiers on board.

Both aircraft plunged to the Potomac River after colliding.

The plane’s passengers included figure skaters returning from the 2025 US. Figure Skating Championships in Wichita, Kansas, and a group of hunters returning from a guided trip.

Army Staff Sergeant Ryan Austin O’Hara, 28; Chief Warrant Officer 2 Andrew Loyd Eaves, 39, and Captain Rebecca M Lobach were killed in the helicopter.

The National Transportation Safety Board said on Saturday that preliminary data showed conflicting readings about the altitudes