NEW YORK, January 31. /TASS/. Determining the cause of the American Airlines plane crash that occurred outside Washington, D.C. on Wednesday may take over a year, Todd Inman, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said.
"The preliminary report, we believe, will be out in 30 days but in case of these major investigations, it will take a year, if not more, for us to come to a final probable cause," he said in an interview with ABC News.
Inman added that the US authorities have already started to pour over data from the aircraft’s black boxes.
On the evening of January 29, an American Airlines passenger plane and a US army Black Hawk helicopter collided midair near Washington’s Ronald Reagan National Airport. The plane en route from Wichita, Kansas was carrying 60 passengers and four crew members. At least three servicemen were aboard the helicopter. Following the collision, the plane and the helicopter crashed into the Potomac River. As of now, 28 bodies have been recovered at the crash site. The authorities no longer expect to locate any survivors.
According to The Wichita Eagle newspaper, members of the US junior figure skating team were on board the crashed plane. A source told TASS that a Russian figure skating pair, world champions Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, as well as Inna Volyanskaya, a bronze medalist at the 1980 USSR Championships, were also on board. US President Donald Trump confirmed the death of Russian citizens in the plane crash. The United States has already contacted Russia to discuss the transfer of the remains of the deceased.