New data revealing factors that potentially led to the deadly Washington, DC plane crash on January 29 has been recovered from the Black Hawk helicopter's black box.
The crew aboard the helicopter may not have heard instructions to pass behind the American airlines plane, National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said Friday.
The words "pass behind the" appear to have been drowned out as the crew was pressing the record button, likely to send their own message, right at that moment.
Homendy also mentioned that the crew aboard the Black Hawk were testing night vision goggles and that they were wearing them for the duration of the flight.
Additionally, one Black Hawk pilot called out that the helicopter was at an altitude of 300 feet, while the other pilot said 400 feet.
"At this time we don't know why there was a discrepancy between the two," Homendy said.
She added that it's possible the pilots had "bad data."
"We do believe that there's inconsistency with data from the altimeters in the cockpit. So it's possible that what they were seeing is not matching up with what's recorded on the flight data recorder," Homendy told NBC News.
The crash between the Black Hawk helicopter and American airlines flight in Washington, DC killed all 67 people aboard the two aircrafts. It was the deadliest plane crash in the U.S. since 2001.
The bodies of all the victims were recovered from the Potomac river, which the aircrafts crashed into following their collision, officials said on February 4.
According to the NTSB, it will take over a year to get a full report on the crash.
"We're only a couple weeks out [from the crash]," Homendy said. "We have a lot of work to do."
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