American Airlines pilot may have attempted last-minute move to avoid collision: NTSB

The pilot of the passenger plane that hit a military chopper and crashed in the Potomac River this week may have attempted a last second move to evade the collision, NTSB said at a news conference.The CRJ was at 325 feet at the time of impact “plus or minus 25-feet” the NTSB revealed at the press conference, Saturday. “At one point, very close to the impact, there was a slight change in pitch, an increase in pitch,” NTSB board member Todd Inman said of the nose of the plane.Follow the NYP’s coverage of the deadly DC plane collision“That is something we will get you more detail on,” Inman added.However, that maneuver was at the “last second,” and was not in time to avoid being hit by the helicopter.The altitude correction is based on information retrieved from the on-board flight data recorder recovered by rescue teams from the Potomac River on Friday.“Again, this data is preliminary,” Inman stressed, though stated official word will come from the agency in the coming days.There are discrepancies in some initial data points that authorities say they will resolve over the course of their investigation.The ATC tower’s estimation of the plane’s altitude on impact did not perfectly align with the dataset recovered from the aircraft’s on-board recording device.The ATC tower had the plane at 200 feet at the time of impact — meaning there is a discrepancy of 100 feet between the measurements of the plane and of the controllers on the ground.“We need to get more granularity to it,” Inman said of the apparent initial discrepancy. “And we currently don’t have the readout of the Black hawk,” Inman added, stating that the data from the helicopter will help resolve the gaps in the investigation’s dataset.NTSB said they are continuing to work out the transcripts of both the plane and helicopter communications, which occurred on different channels.The agency clarified that the recordings that are circulating on social media are only half ...