Nada Tawfik
Reporting from Washington DC

I have just spoken to Todd Inman from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which is currently investigating the aircraft collision.

I asked Inman about Donald Trump’s post on Truth Social, external that the helicopter was “flying too high”. Inman says the NTSB will “analyse every fact”.

He says the information “typically being discussed comes from, say ‘off-the-shelf’ software, what people may have seen on the internet,” adding that they are “not the facts that the NTSB will use”.

“We will use the data that drives us to a reasonable cause for this event,” he adds.

Inman explains that aviation safety is built on a “complex series of systems” called the “Swiss Cheese Effect”, in which there are “multiple different layers where [if] one thing fails, the next should pick up”.

“Any time there is an accident, something needs to change so it doesn’t occur again – we owe it to the families,” he says.