Donald Trump has revealed what he believes caused the horror plane crash in Washington DC that killed 67 people.
The catastrophic incident which took place between an Army helicopter and a passenger plane on January 29. Among those onboard the plane were two young figure skaters, two of their parents and two highly-regarded Russian figure skating coaches, Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov.
The U.S president has weighed in on the cause of the crash and said what happened is “not really too complicated to understand.”
It comes after the regional jet, from Wichita, Kansas, collided with the helicopter which was on a training exercise at the time. The Federal Aviation Administration said the air traffic controllers asked American Airlines Flight 5342 if it could land on a shorter runway just a few minutes before. The pilot agreed.
American Airlines chief executive Robert Isom said the plane was making a normal approach when “the military aircraft came into the path” of the jet. It was reported that controllers cleared the jet to land and flight tracking sites showed the plane adjust its approach to the new runway, reports the Mirror.
Moments before the crash, an air traffic controller asked a helicopter if it had the arriving plane in sight. The controller made another radio call to the helicopter moments later, saying “PAT 25 pass behind the CRJ” — apparently telling the helicopter to wait for the Bombardier CRJ-701 twin-engine jet to pass. There was no reply. Seconds after that, the aircrafts collided.
Trump has since offered his opinion on the case with a post on his social networking platform, Truth Social. In the post, he referred to the maximum altitude helicopters in the area are directed to fly no higher than, which is 200ft. Posting on his Truth Social platform, Trump wrote: “The Blackhawk helicopter was flying too high, by a lot. It was far above the 200 foot limit. That’s not really too complicated to understand, is it?”
In a separate post, the 78-year-old questioned the tactics of the military helicopter and the air traffic controllers. Speaking about the journey, he said that the “airplane was on a perfect and routine line of approach for an extended period of time” on a “clear night”. He also questioned “why didn’t the helicopter go up or down or turn”, and “why didn’t the control tower tell the helicopter what to do instead of asking if they saw the plane?”
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