DC's mid-air collision -- press conference transcript (1/30/2025)

First of all, my heart goes out to the victims of this horrible incident and to their families and loved ones.

This is the full transcript of the first press conference on the incident. The full video can be found on YouTube. I couldn't find a better subreddit to post this.

This post is for educational purposes only and is not meant to be political in any way, though it is difficult to separate it from politics in this case. I am posting this transcript to highlight the dangers of rushing to conclusions when it comes to aviation safety. I also expect that this sub will attract more attention in the next few days, so I wanted everyone to witness the absurdity coming out of the highest ranking official in the US.

These kind of immature, irresponsible and unfounded announcements undermine the phenomenal work done by first responders, emergency personnel, and NTSB engineers and investigators—from rescuing survivors and retrieving victims to meticulously collecting, preserving, and reassembling evidence. They spend countless hours and days on end applying systematic methods for root cause analysis, often devising creative and unprecedented ways to connect the dots.

It also undermines the work that ATCos do. Redditors in this sub are well aware of the immense attention and stress that ATCos endure as a core part of their job. I can't imagine being in that position for years, only to be accused—without evidence—of failing to do my job, and then having that accusation broadcasted to the world.

This is a threat to the future of aviation safety. I don't think I have ever seen an official jump to conclusions this quick and without any evidence beyond "common sense". It is fair to say that this sets a dangerous precedent. If you are an ATCo or an NTSB investigator, you know what will happen to you, your reputation, and the safety of your family if you contradict those "findings". As such, it is more critical than ever to recognize that should this go unchallenged, it won't be long before commercial aviation loses its status as the safest mode of transportation. And it won't be long before NTSB and ATC personnel join the long list of "unnecessary spending of taxpayer's money". If POTUS can use common sense to figure out the cause of an airplane crash, why waste money on all those government employees?

Final note: This is not the full transcript. I omitted some parts at the beginning to keep it relevant, but I did not remove or add anything to the sections included here to avoid accusations of quoting out of context. I also believe that reading the full transcript provides more perspective than merely watching the press conference. If you think that quoting an official verbatim, in full context, is misleading, I encourage some self-reflection.

TL;DR: Posting the full transcript of the first official report on the incident for educational purposes only and to appreciate the efforts that go into ATC and airplane crash investigations.

---

[Trump]

We do not know what led to this crash, but we have some very strong opinions and ideas, and i think we'll probably state those opinions now because over the years I've watched as things like this happen, and they say, well, we're always investigating, and then the investigation three years later, they announce it. I think we have pretty good ideas, but we'll find out how this disaster occurred, and we'll ensure that nothing like this ever happens again. The FAA and the NTSB and the u.s. Military will be carrying out a systematic and comprehensive investigation. Our new secretary of transportation, Sean Duffy, his secretary day on the job when that happened. It's a rough one. We'll be working tirelessly. He's a great gentleman. This whole group, these are great people, and they are working tirelessly to figure out exactly what happened.

We will state certain opinions, however. I'm also immediately appointing an acting commissioner to the FAA, a 22-year veteran of the agency, highly respected. Christopher, thank you very much. Appreciate it. I set high standards for those who work in our aviation system. I changed the Obama standards from very mediocre at best to extraordinary. You remember that. Only the highest aptitude have to be the highest intellect and psychologically superior people were allowed to qualify for air traffic controllers. That was not so prior to getting there when I arrived in 2016. I made that change very early on because I always felt this was a job that -- and other jobs too, but this was a job that had to be superior intelligence, and we didn't really have that, and we had it, and then when I left office, and Biden took over, he changed them back to lower than ever before. I put safety first. Obama, Biden and the democrats put policy first, and they put politics at a level that nobody's ever seen because this was the lowest level. Their policy was horrible, and their politics was even worse. So as you know, last week long before the crash, I signed an executive order restoring our highest standards for air traffic controllers and other important jobs throughout the country. So it was very interesting.

About a week ago, almost upon entering office, I signed something last week that was an executive order, very powerful, on restoring the highest standards of air traffic controllers, and others by the way. And think administration will set the highest possible bar for aviation safety. We have to have our smartest people. It doesn't matter what they look like, how they speak, who they are. It matters, intellect, talent. The word talent. They have to be talented, naturally talented, geniuses. We can't have regular people doing that job. They won't be able to do it, but we'll restore faith in American air travel. I'll have more to say about that.

I do want to point out that various articles that appeared prior to my entering office and here's one. "The FAA's diversity push includes focus on hiring people with severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities." That is amazing, and then it says, "FAA saves people with severe disabilities are most underrepresented segment of the work force" and they want them in, and they want them -- they can be air traffic controllers. I don't think so. This was on january 14th. So that was a week before i entered office. They put a big push to put diversity into the FAA's program. Then another article, the federal aviation administration. This was before I got to office, recently, second term. "The FAA is actively recruiting workers who suffer severe intellectual disabilities, psychiatric problems, and mental conditions under diversity and inclusion hiring initiatives," spelled out on their website.

Can you imagine? These people, their lives are shortened because of the stress that they have. Brilliant people have to be in those positions, and their lives are actually shortened very substantially shortened because of the stress where you have many, many planes coming in to one target, and you need a very special talent and a very special genius to be able to do it.

Targeted disabilities are those disabilities that the federal government as a matter of policy as identified through special emphasis and recruitment and hiring, the FAA's website states, "they include hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability, and dwarfism" all qualify for the position of a controller of airplanes pouring into our country, pouring into a little spot, a little dot on the map, a little runway. The initiative is part of the FAA's diversity and inclusion hiring plan. Think of that. The initiative is part of the FAA's diversity and inclusion hiring plan, which says diversity is integral to achieving FAA's mission of ensuring safe and efficient travel. I don't think so. I think it's just the opposite.

The FAA website shows that the agency's guidance on diversity hiring were last updated on march 23rd of 2022, and then i came in. I assume this is the reason. The FAA which is overseen by secretary pete buttigieg, a real winner. That guy's a real winner. Do you know how badly everything's run since he's run this department of transportation? He's a disaster. He was a disaster as a mayor. He ran his city into the ground, and he's a disaster now. He's just got a good line of bullshit. The department of transportation, his government, agency charged with regulating civil aviation. Well, he runs it. 45,000 People, and he's run it right into the ground with his diversity. So, I had to say that it's terrible.

Then it's a group within the FAA, another story determined that the work force was too white, that they had concerted efforts to get the administration to change that and to change it immediately. This was in the Obama administration just prior to my getting there, and we took care of African Americans, Hispanic Americans. We took care of everybody at levels that nobody's ever seen before. It's one of the reasons I won, but they actually came out with a directive, too white, and we want the people that are competent, but now we mourn and we pray, and we would like to ask all americans to join me in a moment of silence as we ask god to watch over those who have lost their lives and bring comfort to the loved ones and i just want to say god bless everyone in this room. This has been a -- a terrible very short period of time. We'll get to the bottom of it.

So we also -- the same thing, we've seen it many times. I have had the honor of hearing tapes, tapes are scary, very scary tapes. You had a airliner coming in, american airlines. He was doing everything right. He was on track. He was the same track as everybody else that came in. Probably the same track as they have had for 25 years or more. He's coming in the path, and for some reason, you had a helicopter that was at the same height, obviously when they hit, but pretty much the same height, and going at an angle that was unbelievably bad when the air traffic controller said, do you see? He's talking about, do you see him? But there was very little time left when that was stated, and then also, he said, follow him in, and then almost immediately after that, you know, seconds after that, there was the crash that took place. Well, you follow them in. That means, like, everything's fine. Follow them in.

You had a pilot problem from the standpoint of the helicopter. I mean, because it was visual. It was a very clear night. It was cold but clear and clear as you could be. The american airlines plane had lights blazing. They had all their landing lights on. I could see it from the kennedy center tape. We had a tape up on the kennedy center. That seems to be the primary -- that's I'm sure we'll see other tapes because it's such an area with a lot of cameras, a lot of cameras, looking up into the air, into space. So we'll probably see many other shots of it before too much time goes by.

But we had a situation where you had a helicopter that had the ability to stop. I have helicopters. You can stop a helicopter very quickly. It had the ability to go up or down. It had the ability to turn, and the turn it made was not the correct turn, obviously. And it did somewhat the opposite of what it was told. We don't know whether that would have been the difference because the timing was so tight. It was so -- it was so little -- there was so little time to think, but what you did have is you had vision. The helicopter had vision of the plane because you had vision of it all the way -- perfect vision of it all the way from -- at kennedy center where the tape was taken, and for some reason, there weren't adjustments made. Again, you could have slowed down the helicopter substantially. You could have stopped the helicopter. You could have gone up, you could've gone down, you could've gone straight up, straight down, you could have turned. You could have done a million different maneuvers. For some reason, it. just. kept. going. And then made a slight turn at the very end, and it was by that time -- it was too late.

They shouldn't have been at the same height because if it was at the same height, you could have gone under it or over it, and nobody realized or they didn't say that it's at the same height. At the same height, it still wouldn't have been great, but you would have missed it by quite a bit, could have been a thousand feet higher, could have been 200 feet lower, but it was exactly the same height and somebody should have been able to point that out.

So all of this is going to be studied, but it just seems to me from a couple of words that i like to use, the words common sense, some really bad things happened, and some things happened that shouldn't have happened. So you had a helicopter going in identical direction. You had a helicopter that was at the exact same height as somebody going in essentially the opposite direction. You had a plane that was following a track which is a track that every other plane followed, and I don't imagine -- I know I've heard today that they might have been following the preceding plane which was pretty close, but not that close. The preceding plane, but you wouldn't have even been able to see that because of the direction that the helicopter was coming in at. So you had a confluence of -- of bad decisions that were made, and you have people that lost their lives, violently lost their lives.

We're going to take a few questions. I would like to ask our new secretary of transportation to say a few worlds, sean duffy. Great gentleman. Just started. It's not your fault, and I know you agree with me very strongly on intellect and even psychological well-being of the air traffic controllers. Such an important position, and I think I can't emphasize stronger. I changed it when I first ran in 2016. I changed it. We had the highest standard that you could have, and then they changed it back. That was Biden to a standard you just -- I read it to you. That was from one of your papers, one of the people in this room actually wrote that, and then I changed it back a few days ago, and unfortunately, that was -- we'll see.

We don't know that necessarily it's even the controller's fault, but one thing we do know, there was a lot of vision, and people should have been able to see that, you know, at what point do you stop? At what point do you say, well that plane is getting a little bit close? So this is a tragedy that should not have happened. Please. \ \ --- \ [Q&A with POTUS]\ \ [Reporter 1] On DEI and the claims that you've made, are you saying this crash was somehow caused and the result of diversity highingeity what evidence have you seen to report these claims? \ \ [Trump] It just could have been. We have a high standard, a much higher standard than anybody else, and there are things where you have to go by brain power. You have to go by psychological quality, and psychological quality is a very important element of it. These are various, very powerful tests we put to use and they were terminated by Biden, and Biden went by a standard that's the exact opposite. So we don't know, but we do know that you had two planes at the same level. You had a helicopter and a plane. That shouldn't have happened. And we will see. We'll look at that and we're going to see, but certainly for an air traffic controller, we want the brightest, the smartest, the sharpest. We want somebody that's psychologically superior and that's what we're going to have. Yeah, please. Go ahead. \ \ [Reporter 2] Mr. President, you mentioned that there were several russian nationals on the flight. \ \ [Trump] Yes. \ \ [Reporter 2] Will the u.s. Government be willing to facilitate the transfer of their remains considering the fact -- \ \ [Trump] Yes, we will. \ \ [Reporter 2] -- That there is no direct air travel between the two counties. \ \ [Trump] Yes. We have already been in contact with Russia and the answer is yes we will. \ \ [Irrelevant question] \ [Reporter 4] Do we know yet the names of the 67 people who were killed? And you were blaming democrats and DEI policies and air traffic control and seemingly the member of the US Military who was flying that blackhawk helicopter. Don't you think you're getting ahead of the investigation right now? \ \ [Trump] No, I don't think so right now. The names of the people? you mean the names of the people on the plane? You think that's going to make a difference? --\ \ [Reporter 4] Does it come for their families to [unintelligible] -- \ \ [Trump] There are people who have lost their lives. If you want a list of the names, we can give you that -- we'll be giving that very soon. We're in coordination with American Airlines. We're in coordination very strongly obviously with our military. But I think that's not a very smart question I'm surprised coming from you. Please. \ \ [Reporter 5] thank you, mr. President trump. Do you have a sense of who is at fault, if it was the plane, the helicopter, air traffic control, and can you assure people that it is safe to fly in and out of d.c.? \ \ [Trump] Well, I've given you the analysis, and the analysis was -- it was based on vision. We had a lot of people that saw what was happening. You had some people that knew what was happening. There were some warnings, but the warnings were given very, very late, you know, those warnings were given very late. It was almost as if they were given a few seconds later, there was the crash. It should have been brought up earlier, but the people in the helicopter should have seen where they were going! I can't imagine people with 20/20 vision not seeing, you know, what's happening up there. Again, they shouldn't have been at the same height. You're going in reverse directions or sideway directions. Obviously you want to be at different heights. I see it all the time when I'm flying. You have planes going in the opposite. They're always lower or we're higher, so if somehow there's a screwup, there's not going to be a tragedy. It's going to be close, but there's never going to be a tragedy if you're at a different elevation. For whatever reason, they were at the same elevation, and also from the american airlines center, he's along the track that every plane was along. He said, what was a helicopter doing on that track? It's very sad, but visually somebody should have been able to see and taken that helicopter out of play, and they should have been at a different height. \ \ [Reporter 6] Thank you sir. You mentioned the russians that were on board that plane. What other nationalities were on board? \ \ [Trump] There were a couple of others. We're going to be announcing it in about an hour. We have some very specific information. We're calling the countries. We've spoken to most of them, but there were some other countries represented. \ \ [Reporter 6] Have you spoken to president Putin? \ \ [Trump] I have not, no... Not about this. \ \ [Reporter 7] You have already issued an executive order and said, restore our aviation safety. This crash happened after that. Was the executive order successful, and what more do you need to change to keep people safe? \ \ [Trump] Well, you know, we issued it three days ago, and we're in the process of making those changes. This is -- this is something that should have been done a long time ago. Actually, my original order should have never been changed and I think maybe you wouldn't have had this problem, maybe. Yeah, please. Go ahead. \ \ [Reporter 8] Thank you. We see, like, everyday life that's very often the diversity hires, it causes sometimes issues as you just mentioned. So what plan do you have? Are we going to see some fires? Are you gonna fire some of those diversity hires in the federal government? What plan do you have? \ \ [Trump] I would say the answer is yes. If we find that people aren't mentally competent -- you see the language! The language is put out by them, and if you see that -- I'm not going to bore you by reading it again, but these are not people that should be doing this particular job. They would be very good for certain jobs, but not people that should be doing this particular job. \ \ [Reporter 9] Mr. President, you have today, blamed the diversity element, but then told us that you weren't sure that the controllers made any mistake. --\ \ [Trump] Yeah\ \ [Reporter 9] You then said perhaps the helicopter pilots were the ones who made the mistake. \ \ [Trump] Yep. It's all under investigation. \ \ [Reporter 9] I understand that. That's why I'm trying to figure out how you can come to the conclusion right now that diversity had something to do with this crash. \ \ [Trump] Because I have common sense, okay? And unfortunately a lot of people don't. We want brilliant people doing this. This is a major chess game at the highest level. When you have 60 planes coming in during a short period of time, and they're all coming in different directions, and you're dealing with very high-level computer -- computer work, and very complex computers, and one of the other things I will tell you is that the systems that were built -- I was going to rebuild the entire system, and then we had elections that didn't turn out the way it should have. But they didn't build the systems properly. They spent a lot of money renovateing the system. Spending much more money that they would've spent if they bought a new system for air traffic controllers. Meaning the computerized systems. There are certain companies that do a very good job. They didn't use those companies. They use companies that should not have been doing it --\ \ [Reporter 9] Sir -- \ \ [Trump] No, I think -- I think it's very important to understand that for some jobs, and not only this, but air traffic controllers, they have to be at the highest level of genius. \ \ [Reporter 10] I want to ask you about the ice skaters in a moment because the US ice skating committee was affected. But first if I can, the cited FAA text that you read is real, but the implication of this policy stems from efforts that began under president Biden or pete buttigieg is demonstrably false. It has been on the FAA's -- \ \ [Trump] Who said that, you? \ \ [Reporter 10] No, it's on the website, the FAA's website -- it was there from 2013. It was there for the entirety --\ \ [Trump] What I read is --\ \ [Reporter 10] of your administration too. So my question is, why didn't you change the policy during your first administration? \ \ [Trump] I did change it. I changed the Obama policy, and we had a very good policy, and then Biden came in, and he changed it, and then when I came in, two days, three days ago, i signed a new order, bringing it to the highest level of intelligence. \ \ [Reporter 10] It's on the website. \ \ [Trump] Please. Quiet. Quiet. \ \ [Reporter 11] Welcome back to the -- sorry. You mentioned vision was probably the problem that was an issue in this crash. There's been some reports that one of the pilots that the helicopter may have been using night vision. \ \ [Trump] I heard that. We don't know. We're going to know that pretty soon. It may change your viewpoint if you have the night vision. So it's possible that could have happened. That would be, maybe, a reason why you wouldn't actually see as well as on a clear night. You can see sometimes better without it. A couple more. \ \ [Reporter 11] Mr. President, is it helpful to have your secretary of transportation confirmed and does this intensify your interest in getting other nominees through quickly? \ \ [Trump] What? \ \ [Reporter 11] Is it helpful to have your secretary of transportation confirmed and does this intensify your interest in getting other people confirmed quickly as well? \ \ [Trump] Sure, we want fast confirmation, and the democrats are doing everything they can to delay. They're taking too long. We're struggling to get very good people, that everybody knows are gonna be confirmed but we are struggling to get them out faster. We want them out faster. It's a good question actually. We -- we have been pushing Sean. Everyone knows Sean for a long time. He got many, many democrat votes, but they want to take as long as they can. They ask questions like some of the questions that Peter [Reporter 10 that was ordered to stay quiet] would ask that were totally irrelevant and not very good questions, be they want just to keep it going they wanted to keep it as long as possible. I was very honored actually that you got so many democrat votes. That was really good. \ \ [Reporter 12] [unintellitgble] Is it your impression that training was done in that time? \ \ [Trump] What? \ \ [Reporter 12] The training that the helicopter was involved in, is it anything that you can tell us about that? \ \ [Trump] We don't know. These are the things that will come up with the investigation. You don't know. But the helicopter was obviously in the wrong place at the wrong time, and a tragedy occurred. Please. Go ahead. \ \ [Reporter 13] Thank you, mr. President. You have been critical of the current regulations and you've called for big reforms at FAA. I'm curious sir, wha-- \ \ [Trump] I made the reforms, actually. \ \ [Reporter 13] What is your message -- \ \ [Trump] Three days ago, I made the reforms. \ \ [Reporter 13] Yes sir. What is the message to the American public in the weeks and months ahead? Should they feel hesitant to fly, and if you could clarify perhaps something the defense secretary said when he said this helicopter went on a continuity of government mission? \ \ [Trump] I don't know what that refers to, but they were practicing. They were -- they do that. They call it practicing, and they were -- and that's something that should be done. It's only continuity in the sense that we want to have very good people, and that has to be in continuity, and that's what they refer to, but it was basically practice, and it was a practice that worked out very, very badly. \ \ [Reporter 14] On his question, the first question, should people be hesitant to fly right now? \ \ [Trump] No. Not at all. I would not hesitate to fly. This is something that it's been many years, something like this has happened, and the collision is just something that we don't expect ever to happen again. We are gonna have the highest level people, we've already hired. Some of the people that you've already hired for that position, long before we knew about this, I mean, long before -- from the time I came in, we started going out and getting the best people because I said it's not -- it's not appropriate what they're doing. I think it's a tremendous mistake. You know, they like to do things, and they like to take them too far, and this is sometimes what ends up happening. With that, I'm not blaming the controller. I'm saying there are things that you could question, like, the height of the helicopter, the height of the plane being at the same level, and going in opposite directions. It's not a positive, but no. We're already hiring people. Flying is very safe. We have the safest flying anywhere in the world and we'll keep it that way. Thank you all very much. Thank you very much, everybody. Appreciate it. \ \ [end of transcript]