Top US officials have said the military helicopter that collided with a passenger jet over the Potomac River on Wednesday was on a training mission for evacuating members of government in the event of a catastrophe or attack.

The US secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, told Fox News that the helicopter was performing a “continuity of government” drill designed to help pilots “rehearse in ways that would reflect a real world scenario”. Hegseth declined to go further, saying he didn’t want to get “into anything that’s classified”.

The UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter’s unit, the 12th aviation battalion, is assigned a mission to evacuate top US officials from Washington DC to secure locations in the event of an emergency.

Those locations include Raven Rock Mountain, a facility in Pennsylvania constructed in the 1950s for use as a command center in the event of a nuclear war.

Hegseth’s comments correlates with comments by Jonathan Koziol, chief of staff for the army’s aviation directorate, who told reporters on Thursday that “some of their mission is to support the Department of Defense if something really bad happens in this area, and we need to move our senior leaders.

“They do need to be able to understand the environment, the air traffic, the routes, to ensure the safe travel of our senior leaders throughout our government,” Koziol added.

A preliminary FAA report into the midair collision has found that responsibility for handling air traffic control for helicopters and incoming planes at Reagan National airport had been combined earlier than usual on Wednesday night when the American Airlines flight crashed into the army’s Black Hawk helicopter.

All 67 aboard the aircraft involved were killed, marking the deadliest American aviation crash in 16 years.

Typically, responsibility for handling helicopters and planes are separated in the busy airspace from 10am to 9.30pm, the New York Times reported. After 9.30pm, when traffic slows down, the duties can be combined. The collision occurred soon before 9pm.

The FAA preliminary safety report found that staffing at the airport was “not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic”, the Associated Press reported. Staffing targets set by the FAA and the controllers’ union call for 30 air traffic controllers at the airport but as of September 2023 it had 19.

President Trump signed a presidential memorandum on aviation safety on Thursday which he said will undo “damage” done to federal agencies by the Biden administration. Trump has said “incompetence” may have played a role in the crash.

Less than 30 seconds before the helicopter and plane collided, an air traffic controller asked the helicopter if it had the plane in sight: “PAT-25, do you have the CRJ in sight?” The controller makes another radio call to PAT25 moments later: “PAT-25 pass behind the CRJ”, referring to the Canadian-made Bombardier CRJ-700.

But there is mounting speculation that the helicopter’s pilots may have been looking at a plane following behind the American Airlines flight in the landing queue. Questions are also being asked about the altitude of the helicopter. It was cleared to fly at 200ft but appears to have ascended to 400ft, and into the path of the airliner.

As of Friday afternoon, rescue crews had recovered 41 bodies and 28 had been positively identified, the DC fire chief, John Donnelly Sr, said at a news conference. He said 18 families have been told their loved ones died.

Among the passengers on the plane were members of the Skating Club of Boston returning from a development camp that followed the 2025 US figure skating championship in Wichita, Kansas.

The victims also included a group of hunters returning from a guided trip in Kansas, nine students and parents from Fairfax county, Virginia, schools, four members of a steamfitters’ local in suburban Maryland and two Chinese nationals

The army has identified two of the three soldiers on the helicopter – Staff Sgt Ryan Austin O’Hara, 28, of Lilburn, Georgia, and Chief Warrant Officer 2 Andrew Loyd Eaves, 39, of Great Mills, Maryland. The third soldier’s name was not being released at the family’s request, the army said.