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New audio reveals the helicopter pilot said he was able to see the American Airlines passenger plane, and twice requested permission to manoeuvre around it by sight and without further ground support.

The audio shows how the helicopter, using the code Priority Air Transport 25 (PAT-25), specifically asked for visual separation from the CRJ (Canadair Regional Jet) passenger plane.

That means the helicopter’s pilot requested permission to proceed, taking responsibility to look out for the plane and avoid it.

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New audio reveals how the helicopter acknowledged the presence of the passenger jet before the crash

The request was in response to a question by air traffic control (ATC) asking whether they could see the passenger jet.

• ATC: “PAT-25, do you have the CRJ in sight? PAT-25, pass behind the CRJ.”
• PAT-25: “PAT25 has the traffic in sight [unintelligible], request visual separation.”
• ATC: “Confirmed.”

The helicopter made this same request again a short while later, after air traffic control again alerted them to the presence of the CRJ passenger jet.

• ATC: “PAT-25, there’s traffic just south of the Wilson Bridge, CRJ is at 1,200ft setting up for Runway 33.”
• PAT-25: “Requesting visual separation.”
• ATC: “Visual separation approved.”

It is not clear if the helicopter was responding to the wrong aircraft.

Another jet nearly hit a helicopter just 24 hours earlier

The mixing of helicopters and passenger jets around the airport had also led to confusion just 24 hours earlier.

On the evening of 28 January, a different American Airlines jet, flight 4514, had to take evasive action to avoid a helicopter near the airport.

 

The plane landed safely on its second attempt.

The suspected helicopter was next spotted 40 seconds later at an altitude of 1,600ft, having veered off in the opposite direction to the plane.

Staffing was ‘not normal’

As part of its investigation into Wednesday’s crash, the US National Transportation Safety Board is looking into various areas, including staffing at the airport’s air traffic control tower.

Sky’s US partner network NBC revealed that an air traffic controller left work early on the day of the crash. That allegedly left just one person to monitor both airplane and helicopter traffic.

Air traffic controllers are only allowed to operate alone after 9.30pm. The accident took place at 8.47pm.

The Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) preliminary report into the crash said staffing at Reagan Washington National Airport was “not normal” in advance of the accident.

Across the US, FAA data does show a decline in the number of air traffic controllers over the years.

Staffing

The context, however, is an even larger decline in air traffic – meaning there arguably isn’t a need for as many air traffic controllers as in the past.

Staffing v traffic

It also remains unclear whether air traffic control staffing levels affect passenger safety. Fatal air accidents are, thankfully, rare – but that means it’s hard to spot patterns in the data.

A more common occurrence is runway incursions – where a plane, in the grounds of the airport, goes where it isn’t supposed to be.

The vast majority of runway incursions have no safety consequences at all, but it’s a useful proxy to measure the number of mistakes on the ground.

The chart below shows the number of runway incursions per million flights has actually been falling, and last year was the lowest it’s been since the pandemic.

Incursions

A board member of the National Transportation Safety Board said that staffing is likely to be only one small part of the investigation.

Investigators may also be examining the altitude of the helicopter involved in the crash.

Maps published by the FAA show that helicopters are required to stay below 200ft in the area around the airport, but flight tracking data suggests the helicopter may have been flying at 300ft in the moments before the crash.

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New footage shows moment of Washington plane crash

“With military traffic, quite a lot of the time they can negotiate these restrictions,” says Marco Chan, a senior lecturer in aviation operations at Buckinghamshire New University and an experienced pilot.

“If air traffic controllers know what’s going on with traffic in the vicinity, they can allow them to go beyond the minimum or maximum altitude.”

Investigators will need to determine if the data is accurate, and whether the helicopter had received prior authorisation to breach the altitude limit.

The videos of the collision are strikingly, shockingly clear.

The reasons are, so far, not.


The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.

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Four more arrests made over Louvre heist as £76m haul remains missing

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Four more arrests made over Louvre heist as £76m haul remains missing

Four more arrests have been made by French police investigating the Louvre museum heist.

Two men and two women from the Paris region were detained on Tuesday, prosecutor Laure Beccuau said.

Ms Beccuau’s statement did not say what role the quartet are suspected of having played in the robbery. The two men are aged 38 and 39, and the two women are aged 31 and 40.

They are being interrogated by police, who can hold them for questioning for 96 hours.

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Louvre: How ‘heist of the century’ unfolded

The latest arrests come after investigating magistrates filed preliminary charges against three men and one woman who were arrested last month.

Some of the French Crown Jewels, worth an estimated £76m, were stolen in the audacious October raid.

The haul – which included a diamond and emerald necklace Napoleon gave to Empress Marie-Louise, jewels linked to 19th-century Queens Marie-Amelie and Hortense, and Empress Eugenie’s pearl and diamond tiara – has not been recovered.

The heist was pulled off in mere minutes last month – and took place while the Louvre was open to visitors, raising doubts over the credibility of the world’s most-visited museum as a guardian for its priceless works.

On Sunday 19 October, two men used a stolen furniture lift to access the second floor Galerie d’Apollon.

They then cracked open display cases with angle grinders before escaping with their loot and fleeing on the back of two scooters driven by accomplices.

Read more:
Louvre director offers to resign
Gallery closed as structure in ‘dire state’

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Moment thieves escape Louvre in jewel heist

The Paris prosecutor previously said the robbery appeared to be the work of small-time criminals rather than professional gangsters.

Speaking shortly after the heist, art detective Arthur Brand told Sky News that detectives faced a “race against time” to recover the stolen treasure.

“These crown jewels are so famous, you just cannot sell them,” Mr Brand said. “The only thing they can do is melt the silver and gold down, dismantle the diamonds, try to cut them. That’s the way they will probably disappear forever.

“They [the police] have a week. If they catch the thieves, the stuff might still be there. If it takes longer, the loot is probably gone and dismantled. It’s a race against time.”

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Zelenskyy is racing to beat Donald Trump’s peace plan deadline – but what will Russia do?

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Zelenskyy is racing to beat Donald Trump's peace plan deadline – but what will Russia do?

Washington woke up this morning to a flurry of developments on Ukraine.

It was the middle of the night in DC when a tweet dropped from Ukraine’s national security advisor, Rustem Umerov.

He said that the US and Ukraine had reached a “common understanding on the core terms of the agreement discussed in Geneva.”

He added that Volodymyr Zelenskyy would travel to America “at the earliest suitable date in November to complete final steps and make a deal with President Trump”.

Ukraine latest: ‘Delicate’ deal details must be sorted, White House says

By sunrise in Washington, a US official was using similar but not identical language to frame progress.

The official, speaking anonymously to US media, said that Ukraine had “agreed” to Trump’s peace proposal “with some minor details to be worked out”.

More on Donald Trump

In parallel, it’s emerged that talks have been taking place in Abu Dhabi. The Americans claim to have met both Russian and Ukrainian officials there, though the Russians have not confirmed attendance.

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Peace deal ‘agreement’: What we know

“I have nothing to say. We are following the media reports,” Dmitry Peskov, Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson, told Russian state media.

Trump is due to travel to his Florida resort Mar-a-Lago tonight, where he will remain until Sunday.

He set a deadline of Thursday – Thanksgiving – for some sort of agreement on his plan.

We know the plan has been changed from its original form, but it’s clear that Zelenskyy wants to be seen to agree to something quickly – that would go down well with President Trump.

Read more:
US hails ‘tremendous progress’ on Ukraine peace plan

In full: Europe’s 28-point counter proposal

My sense is that Zelenskyy will try to get to Mar-a-Lago as soon as he can. Before Thursday would be a push but would meet Trump’s deadline.

It will then be left for the Russians to state their position on the revised document.

All indications are that they will reject it. But maybe the secret Abu Dhabi talks will yield something.

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Controversial US and Israeli-backed aid operation the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to close

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Controversial US and Israeli-backed aid operation the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to close

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a controversial US and Israeli-backed aid distribution group, has said it will permanently cease operations.

Set up as an alternative to United Nations aid programmes in May, GHF’s executive director John Acree said on Monday that it “succeeded in our mission of showing there’s a better way to deliver aid to Gazans”.

The foundation had already closed down aid distribution sites after US President Donald Trump’s ceasefire plan was agreed by Hamas and Israel in October.

The GHF which began operations in Gaza after an Israeli blockade of food deliveries, lasting nearly three months, was criticised by Palestinians, aid workers and health officials who said it forced people to risk their lives to reach the sites.

File pic: Reuters
Image:
File pic: Reuters

According to witnesses and videos posted to social media, Israeli soldiers repeatedly opened fire at the sites, killing hundreds. The IDF denied this, saying it only fired warning shots as a crowd-control measure or if its troops were in danger.

In July, analysis from Sky News’ Data and Forensics team found that aid distributions by GHF were associated with a significant increase in deaths.

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Gaza deaths increase when aid sites open

MSF – also known as Doctors Without Borders – said in a report in August that the GHF sites “morphed into a laboratory of cruelty,” and described scenes there as “orchestrated killing”.

More on Gaza

‘We are proud,’ says GHF director

Mr Acree said in a statement through the GHF’s website that “from the outset, GHF’s goal was to meet an urgent need” and to hand over a successful aid operation to “the broader international community”.

The GHF would hand over its work to the US-led Civil-Military Coordination Center in Israel overseeing the Gaza ceasefire.

“We are winding down our operations as we have succeeded in our mission of showing there’s a better way to deliver aid to Gazans,” Mr Acree said.

File pic: Reuters
Image:
File pic: Reuters

The GHF director added: “At a critical juncture, we are proud to have been the only aid operation that reliably and safely provided free meals directly to Palestinian people in Gaza, at scale and without diversion.

“From our very first day of operations, our mission was singular: feed civilians in desperate need. We built a new model that worked, saved lives, and restored dignity to civilians in Gaza.”

According to the GHF website, the group distributed more than three million food boxes, totalling 187 million meals, and supplied 1.1 million packs of Ready-to-Use Supplementary Food (RUSF) for malnourished children.

Read more:
Sky’s Adam Parsons sees Gaza destruction
Israel launches strikes on Gaza
Israel strikes Beirut for first time in months

Hamas welcomes GHF closure

In a statement, Hamas welcomed the closure of GHF and accused it of being a project that “engineered starvation” in partnership with Israel.

A Hamas spokesperson said: “Since its entry into the Gaza Strip, this foundation was part of the occupation’s security system, which adopted distribution mechanisms entirely disconnected from humanitarian principles, and created dangerous and degrading conditions for the dignity of the starving Palestinian people during their attempts to obtain a piece of bread, resulting in the killing and injury of thousands, through sniper operations and deliberate killing.”

They also called on international legal bodies to hold “this foundation and its officers accountable for their crimes against our people”.

US state department deputy spokesperson Tommy Piggot also said on X that the aid group “shared valuable lessons learned with us and our partners”.

“GHF’s model, in which Hamas could no longer loot and profit from stealing aid, played a huge role in getting Hamas to the table and achieving a ceasefire,” he added.

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