Shock as Army takes ‘extraordinary step’ over female Black Hawk pilot in DC plane crash: Recap

The mystery over the identity of a female pilot in the Black Hawk helicopter that crashed has deepened after Army officials refused to release her name.

An Army spokesperson confirmed the woman’s name was being withheld at the request of her family at a press conference on Friday.

‘At the request of the family, the name of the third soldier will not be released at this time,’ the US Army said.

No details about why the woman’s name was withheld have been released.

Military personnel killed in accidents or combat are usually made public 24 hours after their families are notified, making withholding her name very unusual.

Relatives of military personnel who die in the line of duty can request to have their late loved-one’s identity kept private.

But the decision to withhold the woman’s name in the face of a huge and already controversial tragedy has inflamed outlandish theories about the disaster.

The New York Times – a publication not prone to hyperbole – called the decision to withhold the woman’s name an ‘extraordinary step.’

Pilot in charge Chief Warrant Office 2 Andrew Eaves and crew chief Staff Sergeant Ryan O’Hara were named on Friday as those on board.

Earlier on Friday, a transgender woman called Jo Ellis was falsely-named as the woman on board the doomed Black Hawk.

She debunked the claim during an exclusive chat with DailyMail.com.

An investigation into what caused Wednesday night’s collision with an American Eagle plane carrying 64 people is ongoing.

The Black Hawk chopper was seen crossing into the path of the jet and striking it, with its pilot subsequently accused of deviating from the course and flying too high.

Both aircraft plunged into the Potomac River below, with all 64 people on the plane and three on the chopper dying as a result.

Ronald Reagan National Airport, where the American Eagle jet was coming into land, also faces questions over air traffic controller shortages despite serving a notoriously-crowded airspace.

On Thursday night it emerged that one controller at the airport had been allowed to go home on the night of the crash, leaving their colleague with a much larger workload.

President Trump has also suggested diversity equity and inclusion (DEI) measures may be to blame for the tragedy, but he has not elaborated on his claim.

NTSB officials have confirmed that the black box from the Black Hawk helicopter involved in the crash has been recovered from the Potomac River.

They said that the box contained both the cockpit voice recorder and the digital flight data reciever.

An official said: ‘We saw no exterior damage that would indicate that it was compromised.’

The NTSB said they are confident they will be able to extract all the infromation from the black box.

On Thursday night two black boxes from the passenger jet were also recovered in a good condition.

This image from the NTSB shows investigators inspecting a black box from American Airlines flight 5342

A makeshift memorial has appeared near the crash site in Washington DC, with large crosses erected in memory of all 67 who died in the midair collision.

Donald Trump‘s press secretary on Friday defended the president’s use of an expletive during a briefing on Washington air tragedy, explaining that it was one of the ways in which he connected with ordinary Americans.

A day earlier, Trump delivered an update on the air crash, railing against the previous administration and its transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, as a ‘disaster’ with ‘a good line of bullshit.’

Leavitt was asked whether this was part of a deliberate communications strategy.

‘I think one of the things that the American people love most about this president is that he often says what they are thinking, but sometimes lack the courage to say themselves,’ she said,

‘And I think yesterday at this podium, you heard President Trump express great frustration, perhaps even anger, with the previous administration’s policies, many of which have led to the crises that our country is currently facing and that this president is focused on fixing.’

Terry Liercke, vice president and manager at Reagan National Airport, said 100 flights were canceled there Friday.

Two of the three runways at the airport were closed to prevent planes from flying over the crash site. Liercke said they will likely remain closed for about a week, but that will be reassessed as the recovery effort continues.

Republic Airways Flight 4514 was forced to back out of touching down and had to make a second approach after a helicopter appeared near its flight path.

Spencer Lane, 26, uploaded the photo around 7pm ET Wednesday, which appeared to show the jet taxiing on the runway at Wichita Airport in Kansas before it took off for its final flight. 

He captioned it ICT -> DCA – the codes for Wichita Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport and Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

The remains of Staff Sgt. Ryan Austin O’Hara, 28, of Lilburn, Georgia, the crew chief, have been recovered and a positive identification is pending, the Army said.

The remains of Chief Warrant Officer 2 Andrew Loyd Eaves, 39, of Great Mills, Maryland, and of the third soldier have not yet been recovered. Both are classified as duty status-whereabouts unknown, but officials have said there are no survivors of the crash.

Eaves, one of the pilots on the helicopter, served in the Navy from 2007 to 2017, then moved to the Army to serve as a Black Hawk pilot.

At the family’s request, the name of the third crew member killed in the crash isn’t being released at this time, the Army said.

This image provided by the U.S. Army shows Staff Sgt. Ryan Austin O’Hara, 28

This image provided by the U.S. Army shows Chief Warrant Officer 2 Andrew Loyd Eaves, 39

DC fire chief John Connoly said on Friday afternoon that 41 ‘sets of remains’ have been recovered and 28 have been identified.

He added that officials expect to recover all bodies from the Potomac, though ice in the river has complicated their efforts.

Ronald Reagan National Airport has 25 fully certified air traffic controllers and three more who are in training, the Federal Aviation Administration said.

The air-traffic control tower in the nation’s capital is authorized to have 28 controllers, the FAA said.

The three controllers who are in training have been fully certified before at other facilities, the agency said in a statement.

A Virginia family of four were among the victims of the devastating American Airlines crash on Wednesday night in Washington, DC.

The Livingstons, from Ashburn, were on their way home from Wichita, Kansas, after 11-year-old Alydia and 14-year-old Everly had participated in the 2025 US Figure Skating Championships.

The two sisters died in the horrific crash on Flight 5342 alongside their dad, Peter, and their mom, Donna.

‘Flight AA5342 will not be used for any future American Airlines flights,’ the airline said ina statement on Friday.

It is a common practice for airlines to retire flight numbers after aviation tragedies.

The same was done with the flight numbers involved in the terror attacks of September 11, 2001.

Chief Warrant Officer 2 Elizabeth McCormick, who flew Black Hawks for seven years until an injury forced her to retire, believed the crash over DC was preventable.

First, only the minimum three crew were on board despite the training flight crossing through crowded airspace at night.

‘If you’re flying a visual flight plan and you’re flying in a crowded airspace like this, you really should have two crew chiefs to clear each side, as the pilots only have visibility straight ahead,’ she told CNN.

‘You only have visibility of the front 180 degrees, your crew chiefs clear the back. If you only have one crew chief, how much can you clear?

‘I think that was a major issue, as well as the altitude.’

‘He loved being a flight attendant because he truly enjoyed traveling and meeting new people. But his true love was his family,’ Robbie Bloom said.

She said he was a father, a stepfather, a husband and a brother.

‘He will be truly missed. Our biggest comfort at this time is the outpouring of love we are seeing from past passengers who met Ian while he was doing what he loved to do! The family appreciates the outpouring of love and support we’ve received, but at this time we would ask for privacy as we process and grieve our loss.’

The clip, which appeared to be recoded by a passenger, showed a bubbly Ian Epstein, 53, chatting with passengers on an earlier flight, ‘having fun and reminding everyone how important we are.’

‘Ian was the person who made customers feel like they were in first class, even if their seat was in the last row,’ the user who shared the video wrote in the caption.

A handful of people placed bouquets and notes of remembrance at Titanic Memorial behind Fort McNair.

Small bits of debris were floating in the nearby river while police and fire crews launched boats from a dock to continue recovery efforts.

Below, Roberto Marquez from Dallas, Texas, sets up a makeshift memorial for the victims of the deadly mid air collision near Reagan National Airport in Arlington, Virginia, on January 31.

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Cory Haynos, of Virginia, landed the triple axel for the second time in his career on Wednesday morning – just mere hours before he would find himself on the doomed American Airlines Flight 5342.

The triple axel – which sees an athlete spin in the air three times – was first performed by then-20-year-old Canadian Vern Taylor, who landed it in a 1978 competition.

It was a clear, cold night in Washington DC on January 29, when at 8.47 pm, a bright orange and red flame suddenly erupted in the sky.

Voice recordings of air traffic controllers tell of the horror.

Insiders and a preliminary internal FAA report have started to reveal catastrophic failures leading up to the aviation disaster that killed 67 people, including three soldiers, Wednesday night.

The collision took place as the American Airlines flight, carrying 60 passengers and four crew, made its final approach to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport shortly before 9pm ET.

The defense secretary appeared on Fox News to discuss the tragedy on Friday, revealing that the investigation was focusing primarily on the altitude of the plane and the Black Hawk.

‘We are looking at altitude, and the president was clear about that, someone was at the wrong altitude,’ Hegseth said. ‘Was the Black Hawk too high? Was it on course? Right now we don’t quite know.’

The airspace around Washington, D.C., is congested and complex — a combination aviation experts have long worried could lead to catastrophe.

Even in peak flying conditions, experts said, the airspace around Reagan Washington National Airport can challenge the most experienced pilots, who must navigate hundreds of other commercial planes, military aircraft and restricted areas around sensitive sites.

‘This was a disaster waiting to happen,’ said Ross Aimer, a retired United Airlines captain and chief executive officer of Aero Consulting Experts. ‘Those of us who have been around a long time have been yelling into a vacuum that something like this would happen because our systems are stretched to extremes.’

NTSB officials did not say Thursday how long the investigation would take, but accident investigations often take between one to two years to complete.

The agency typically releases a preliminary report within a few weeks of the accident that includes a synopsis of information collected at the scene.

Sam Lilley, the first officer on the AA plane, knew he wanted to fly and began training to be a pilot, like his father, right out of college.

‘You don’t really expect to meet people that find their purpose so early on in life, and Sam found his in flying,’ said Kaitlin Sells, who met Lilley while they were students at Georgia Southern University.

The flight path was canceled on Thursday as a result of the tragedy, but American Airlines has confirmed it will resume on Friday.

The direct flight operates daily since it was introduced in January 2024.

Surveillance cameras filmed the moment an airline collided with an army helicopter over DC, causing the worst US air disaster in 23 years.

The CCTV footage from two angles showed the Bombardier CRJ700 airline slowly approaching the runway, its lights shining brightly against the night sky.

Suddenly the helicopter entered the frame, traveling much more quickly from the left, heading straight for the passenger plane.

Neither aircraft appeared to change course or have any time to attempt evasive action before a huge, violent explosion lit up the sky.

What was left of the helicopter appeared to continue straight through and crash straight into the water, while the plane splintered into pieces.

A transgender Black Hawk pilot has been wrongly named as one of the three US Army personnel flying the helicopter that collided with a plane in Washington DC.

Jo Ellis, 34, was misidentified as the female co-pilot of the doomed chopper on Thursday.

A shaken-sounding Ellis picked up the phone when called by DailyMail.com Friday morning, confirming that she was not killed.

The bodies were pulled from the Potomac River as a massive recovery effort continues following the deadliest aviation disaster in a generation, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press.

The recovery efforts were continuing Friday. The official was not authorized to discuss details of the investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity.

A young woman who sent her husband a haunting final text shortly before dying in the Washington DC plane crash has been identified.

Asra Hussain messaged husband Hamaad Raza, 25, to say ‘We are landing in 20 minutes’ as American Eagle Flight 5342 approached Reagan National Airport just before 8pm ET Wednesday night.

Tragically it was the last text Asra, 26, would ever send.

A Democratic California congresswoman and other liberals have claimed that president Donald Trump is to blame for the deadly mid-air collision in Washington DC.

‘I blame Donald Trump and his entire administration for this horrific crash and the deaths of all involved,’ Rep. Sydney Kamlager said on X of the tragedy that left 67 dead on Wednesday night.

‘This is what happens when you confirm incompetence and have such disdain for government. His government is trying to kill us, not keep us safe.’

Trump suggested on Thursday that diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) were to blame for the crash.

The president asserted his opinion at the White House press briefing even though the crash has yet to be fully investigated and there has been no determination as to whether the FAA did anything wrong.

‘The FAA is actively recruiting workers who suffer severe intellectual disabilities, psychiatric problems, and other mental and physical conditions under a diversity and inclusion hiring initiative spelled out on the agency’s website,’ said Trump, noting that the program allowed for the hiring of people with hearing and vision issues as well as paralysis, epilepsy and ‘dwarfism.’

Trump said air traffic controllers needed to be geniuses.

‘They have to be talented, naturally talented geniuses,’ he said. ‘You can’t have regular people doing their job.’

Trump also harshly criticized former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

‘That guy’s a real winner,’ Trump said sarcastically of Buttigieg, before adding, ‘He’s a disaster.’

At least 40 bodies have been recovered from a Washington DC aircraft collision which has wiped out entire family units, including a TikTok skating star, a famed athlete couple, and all four flight crew members.

Figure skaters Spencer Lane, 16, Brielle Beyer, 12, and Jinna Han, 13, are among the more than five dozen victims who died Wednesday evening after an American Airlines flight and an Army Black Hawk collided in Washington DC.

Famed Russian skating couple Evgenia Shishkova, 53, and Vadim Naumov, 56, alongside Lane, Beyer and Han’s mothers also tragically lost their lives in the crash over the Potomac River.

POTUS issued a fiery message on Friday morning on Truth Social.

It comes after the New York Times reported the Army chopper was flying at above 300 feet when the collision happened even though it was supposed to be at 200 feet.

‘I’ve gone record saying that that we’re having a lot of close calls, and that I was hopeful that it wouldn’t happen, but I think a lot of people in the aviation world suspected that eventually something was going to happen,’ Brauchle added.

‘With all those close calls, something ultimately was going to happen.’

Part of the issue has been an increase in air traffic coupled with a significant shortfall of air controllers in the FAA.

The Black Hawk involved in the crash appears to have been flying too high and outside its approved flight path during the tragedy on Wednesday, The New York Times reported.

The chopper was reportedly supposed to be flying in a different location and lower to the ground – no higher than 200 feet – when it hit the passenger jet.

It was reportedly flying at above 300 feet instead, and about a half-mile off the approved route when it hit the jet.

The pilot in charge of the Army chopper confirmed vidual sight of the American Airlines plane, and air traffic control told him to follow the route and stay behind the plane.

But the pilot did not follow the intended route, people briefed on the matter told the NYT.

Captain Chesley ‘Sully’ Sullenberger has said he believes flying at night over water could be factors in what led to a American Airlines flight colliding with a helicopter, killing 67 people.

He said: ‘There would have been fewer ground lights visible over the water than over land at night.’

The footage shows the moment the plane, flying near the US Capitol building, was approaching to land at DC‘s Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Wednesday.

Lights from both aircraft are seen flashing as they continue to fly towards each other, before crashing in mid-air. A fireball then erupted in the night sky and both the plane and helicopter tumbled into the icy Potomac River.

National Transportation Safety Board Chair Jennifery Homendy stunned reporters after being asked several ways if President Donald Trump jumped the gun by blaming the deadly D.C. crash on ‘DEI’ and previous administrations.

Homendy led a press conference on-site at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport Thursday afternoon.

Several of the reporters in the crowd asked her about Trump’s eyebrow-raising assertions that he made standing at the podium earlier Thursday in the White House briefing room.

‘With all due respect, I think the press also likes to state what probable cause is before we get to the probable cause,’ Homendy said. ‘So what I’m going to say is you need to give us time.’

‘NTSB investigators recovered the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder from the Bombardier CRJ700 airplane involved in yesterday’s midair collision at DCA,’ National Transportation Safety Board spokesperson Peter Knudson said.

‘The recorders are at the NTSB labs for evaluation.’

Ryan O’Hara from Georgia was on board the doomed helicopter when it plunged into the Potomac River on Wednesday night.

He was one of three Army soldiers on an annual proficiency training flight and is one of the 67 lives lost in the deadliest US plane crash since 2009.

O’Hara left behind a wife and a one-year-old son, and was remembered fondly by his his school.

Chief Warrant Officer 2, Andrew Eaves has been identified as the pilot on board the Black Hawk Army helicopter.

The beloved husband and father-of-two was one of three soldiers aboard the aircraft conducting a training operation.

The crew chief was named as father-of-one Ryan O’Hara.

The female co-pilot has yet to be named.

Eaves’ devastated wife, Carrie, said: ‘I am sure by now all of you have heard the news of the tragedy that has occurred in DC.

‘My husband was one of the pilots in the Blackhawk. We ask that you pray for our family and friends and for all the other families that are suffering today. We ask for peace while we grieve.’

She has shared several photos of Eaves, one of which he was in uniform, and asked her friends to share photos they may have of him in his memory.

Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves confirmed his death on Thursday night, taking to X to write: ‘Mississippi is mourning the loss of Brooksville native Chief Warrant Officer 2 Andrew Eaves, who was killed in last night’s accident at Reagan National Airport.’