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Crews Lift Wreckage From D.C. Plane Crash Out of Potomac

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  • Post last modified:February 3, 2025

Salvage crews lifted the first wreckage of American Airlines Flight 5342 from the Potomac River on Monday, the start of an operation that was expected to take three days.
The salvage work, which began at first light, will help investigators search for clues and will give divers room to recover the last bodies of the 67 people who died in the crash over Washington between the jet and a U.S. Army helicopter.
The first piece of wreckage surfaced just after 10 a.m. Eastern, when a red crane, perched on a barge in the middle of the river, slowly hoisted what appeared to be one of the plane’s engines out of the water. Its casing appeared to hang loose on one side and was partly missing on the other.
At noon, a larger, more mangled piece of wreckage was removed from the river. It appeared to be from the plane’s main body, including windows, the registration number and an American flag decal on the outside. Fragments of the wreckage hung down from the crane and fluttered in the wind. As the crane moved, the plane’s destroyed interior became visible from the riverbank.
By Monday afternoon, both pieces of wreckage rested on barges. They will eventually be transferred to a flatbed trailer on shore and taken to a hangar, to be studied as part of the investigation into the crash, according to officials.
Nearby, planes roared as they took off from a runway at Ronald Reagan National Airport.
Officials said on Sunday afternoon that the remains of 55 victims had been recovered, and that the salvage work on Monday might reveal the bodies of some of the 12 who were still missing, as crews searched the cold and murky water.
The collision was the deadliest plane crash in the United States in two decades. It occurred in clear skies as the jet approached the airport around 9 p.m. on Wednesday.
Federal investigators have said it is still too early to speculate about the causes of the crash. Still, the disaster has raised concerns about staffing, congestion and safety at one of the nation’s busiest airports.

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