THE pilot famed for his heroic plane landing on a New York river has suggested a crucial complication could have been a factor in the American Airlines jet crash.

All 64 people on board the plane were killed when it collided with a helicopter over Washington DC’s Potomac River on Wednesday night.

Captain Chesley ‘Sully’ Sullenberger said visibility could have been hampered as there would have been “fewer ground lights visible over the water than over land at night”.

He added: “It might have made it a little bit harder to see. But that’s supposition. We don’t know.”

The former pilot, renowned for safely landing a passenger plane on the Hudson River in 2009, said “everything is harder” at night.

He told the New York Times: “Nighttime always makes things different about seeing other aircraft — basically all you can do is see the lights on them. 

“You have to try to figure out: Are they above you or below you? Or how far away?

“Or which direction are they headed?”

Investigators are now analyzing black box data and collecting debris from the wreckages in the river as they try to pinpoint what caused the disaster.

It was the first fatal plane crash in the US for almost 16 years.

Captain Sully said: “We’ve had to learn important lessons literally with blood too often, and we had finally gotten beyond that, to where we could learn from incidents, and not accident.”

A series of apparent errors have also been pointed to as grieving families of the 67 victims wait for answers.

New Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy admitted the crash was “absolutely” preventable.

Air traffic control staffing numbers were “not normal”, according to an initial Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) report.

The controller who was directing helicopters was also instructing planes on Wednesday night, when these jobs are typically assigned to two people.

Experts have said instructions from the operator could have been clearer as the plane came to land at Ronald Reagan Airport.

Less than 30 seconds before the crash, one controller asked the helicopter if it could see the plane.

They said: “‘PAT 2-5, do you have the CRJ in sight?”

The controller made another call to the chopper just moments later, saying: “PAT 25 pass behind the CRJ.”

Seconds later, the plane and Black Hawk helicopter collided.

The helicopter is understood to have been flying outside its approved path – and could have been too high.

And just a day before the crash, a passenger flight had to abort a landing at the airport.