Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs Remains from all 67 victims of the midair collision over Washington, D.C., that sent an American Airlines regional plane and an Army Black Hawk helicopter crashing into the Potomac River have been recovered, officials said Tuesday.Officials said in a statement that 66 of the remains have been positively identified.The development comes as parts of the airliner’s cockpit and tail were removed from the water while crews continue the lengthy process of recovering the wreckage.The pieces were lifted by a crane and placed onto a barge with other parts recovered from the flight that took off from Wichita, Kansas, Wednesday for Washington’s Reagan National Airport with 60 passengers and four crew members on board. One of the pieces recovered earlier in the day showed a portion of the American Eagle logo.
Parts of a plane are lifted from the Potomac River near the wreckage site of the midair collision between an American Airlines jet and a Black Hawk helicopter, at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Feb. 4, 2025, in Arlington, Virginia.
AP Photo/Ben Curtis
Crews began work Monday to salvage the wreckage, recovering the battered midsection of the plane’s fuselage, one of the engines and a wing.
“Over the next 24 hours, our goal is really to complete our commitment to finishing the civilian plane recovery,” Col. Frank Pera of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers told reporters Monday.Officials said it will take several days to remove all of the wreckage.
A crane pulls up a portion of an American Airlines regional plane during recovery efforts Feb. 4, 2025, in Arlington, Virginia.
Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images
Newly released drone video from the National Transportation Safety Board shows a first look at the scene hours after the crash, the Black Hawk helicopter appearing mostly intact.Investigators said they’re still poring over the flight data and cockpit voice recorders from both aircraft. They’ve also obtained training and flight logs for both flight crews, maintenance logs for both aircraft and are building the crews’ daily histories.
A crane retrieves part of the wreckage from the Potomac River, in the aftermath of the collision of American Eagle Flight 5342 and a Black Hawk helicopter, by Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, in Arlington, Virginia, Feb. 4, 2025.
Reuters/Eduardo Munoz
Interviews with all five air traffic controllers working the night of the collision have also been completed as the NTSB tries to piece together what happened.
Amid questions over whether military helicopters should be sharing the same airspace with commercial air traffic, Billy Nolen, a former acting administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, said they should.”It happens all the time,” Nolen said. “So this is not one of a zero-sum game. We are in this national capital region. What we should look at is, say, have we missed anything in terms of how this is designed, how the routes are designed, and is there anything that we would, should or could do differently to prevent this from happening again?”As investigators push for answers, a moment of silence was held Monday at skating rinks across the country remembering the 67 lives lost, including those in the ice skating community.
Flowers, photos and messages are seen at a memorial at the International Skating Center of Connecticut before a moment of silence in memory of the D.C. plane crash victims, with a special tribute to Vadim Naumov and Evgenia Shishkova, Feb. 3, 2025.
Aaron Flaum/Hartford Courant/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
Kathryn Krupnik
contributed to this report.
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Alex Sundby
Alex Sundby is a senior editor at CBSNews.com. In addition to editing content, Alex also covers breaking news, writing about crime and severe weather as well as everything from multistate lottery jackpots to the July Fourth hot dog eating contest.
