Two employees of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority have been arrested and charged with leaking official airport records after surveillance footage of last week’s collision between an American Airlines jet and an Army Black Hawk helicopter was aired on CNN.

A US passenger jet carrying 64 people crashed on Janaury 30, into Washington’s Potomac River after colliding midair with a military helicopter on a nighttime training exercise Wednesday, prompting a desperate search for survivors in the dark, near-freezing water.

The MWAA said in a statement that the employees made an “unauthorised copy” of the video and gave it to the media outlet.

Mohamed Lamine Mbengue, 21, from Rockville, Maryland, was charged with computer trespass for allegedly making an unauthorised copy of airport records, according to authority spokeswoman Crystal Nosal, as reported by The Washington Post.

Two days later, 45-year-old Jonathan Savoy from Upper Marlboro, Maryland, was also charged with the same offence. Both individuals have been booked and released.

The security footage they are accused of supplying to CNN was featured on the network’s News Central segment on Friday morning.

On the night of the incident, CNN also broadcast footage from an EarthCam camera at Washington, DC’s Kennedy Center, which is publicly accessible.

The collision is under investigation by multiple agencies.

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