On January 29, 2025, a commercial jetliner and a U.S. Army helicopter collided in midair over the Potomac River, near Washington\u2019s Ronald Reagan National Airport. On February 2, the U.S. Coast Guard and District of Columbia Fire Department requested NOAA Coast Survey\u2019s expertise in hydrographic surveying in order to locate wreckage from the incident using multibeam and side scan sonar technology. Once Coast Survey arrived, the incident command team turned over virtually all survey operations, particularly in the shallow water debris field, to our field units.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
The Coast Survey navigation response teams<\/a> worked alongside the National Transportation Safety Board, the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, DC Fire and EMS, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and other partners for eight straight days until the recovery effort was largely complete. In total, the navigation response teams acquired 32 linear nautical miles of multibeam echosounder data and 26 linear nautical miles of side scan sonar data. From these data, the location and acoustic imagery of 58 targets were provided directly to Navy, DC Fire, and FBI divers to focus their salvage efforts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n NOAA’s work fueled all salvage and dive operations for the remainder of the response, which included the support of weather and current operations provided by NOAA to support divers and on-the-water operations of salvage. Navigate here<\/a> for more details on how NOAA mobilized experts and resources from the Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services<\/a>, National Geodetic Survey<\/a>, NOAA Commissioned Corps<\/a>, the Office of Response and Restoration<\/a>, and the National Weather Service<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The latest verified information about the accident is available on the National Transportation Safety Board’s dedicated webpage<\/a>. Along with the recent release of the preliminary report, we\u2019re now sharing more details of our response. Below is the timeline of events detailing Coast Survey efforts:<\/p>\n\n\n\n