The pilots of the US Army helicopter that collided with an American Airlines Group Inc. regional jet near Washington last week were likely wearing night-vision goggles at the time of the accident.

The Army on Friday released the names of two male aviators who were killed when their Black Hawk helicopter collided with an American Airlines regional jet on Wednesday night. But in an extraordinary step, the Army did not identify the third crew member, a female pilot, citing her family’s request for privacy.

The female pilot killed in the helicopter collision with a passenger jet in Washington DC will not be named, the US Army said. The army made the a highly unusual decision at the request of the family not to release the name of one of the three soldiers killed when a military Black Hawk collided with a passenger jet on Wednesday evening.

The Army has identified the third crew member of a Black Hawk helicopter who died in the collision with a commercial jet in the skies over Washington last week as Capt. Rebecca M. Lobach, 28, of Durham, N.C.

In the deadliest U.S. major commercial aviation incident in 16 years, there were no survivors in a collision between a commercial aircraft and an Army helicopter by Ronald Reagan National Airport near Washington D.

Technology that would have allowed air traffic controllers to better track the movement of an Army helicopter was turned off at the time of the crash, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said in an interview Thursday.

A key safety system was turned off on the U.S. Army helicopter that collided with an American Airlines regional jet last week near Washington's Reagan Airport, killing 67. Senate Commerce Committee chair Ted Cruz told reporters the Black Hawk helicopter had turned off its automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B),