Pitch of American Airlines Jet Turned Upward Just Before Crash

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American Airlines Flight 5342, a regional jet en route from Wichita, Kan., was zooming down and about to land at Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington on Wednesday night, when it made a last-minute turn upward.
Investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board appeared unsure if that meant that the pilots were alerted to something wrong in the plane’s final descent. But the sudden change in trajectory was not enough to avoid colliding with a military helicopter that was flying higher than it was supposed to be.
“I can tell you at one point very close to the impact, there was a slight change in pitch, an increase in pitch,” said Todd Inman, a member of the safety board.
In a briefing Saturday, members of the board provided new information and more detail than previously revealed of the moments leading up to the midair crash that proved to be the deadliest aviation accident in the United States in nearly a quarter of a century.

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