There were no survivors after a regional passenger jet with 64 people onboard collided with a military helicopter and crashed into the Potomac River while approaching Ronald Reagan National airport on Wednesday night, Donald Trump and US officials have said.
At least 28 bodies have been recovered from the plane and one from the helicopter by first responders working in what the Washington DC fire and emergency medical services chief, John A Donnelly, called “extremely frigid conditions”. Donnelly said he was confident they will ultimately be able to recover all of the bodies from the crash.
Federal investigators on Thursday recovered the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder from the airplane involved in the collision. The recorders are currently at the National Transportation Safety Board labs for analysis, the agency said on Thursday evening.
Donald Trump held a press conference on the crash during which he questioned the role of the helicopter pilot and air traffic control, and blamed Joe Biden’s administration as he injected politics into his response. In response to a question on why he believes DEI is responsible, Trump said: “Because I have common sense and unfortunately a lot of people don’t. We want brilliant people doing this. This is a major chess game at the highest level.” The president later signed an executive order on aviation safety that rolls back diversity initiatives and repeated to reporters claims without evidence that these contributed to Wednesday’s crash.
Staffing at Ronald Reagan National airport’s air traffic control tower was “not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic”, according to an internal preliminary FAA safety report about the crash reported by the New York Times. According to the outlet, the controller who was handling helicopters was also instructing planes which were landing and departing from the tarmacs. The New York Times reports: “This increases the workload for the air traffic controller and can complicate the job. One reason is that the controllers can use different radio frequencies to communicate with pilots flying planes and pilots flying helicopters.”
The American Airlines flight, operated by PSA Airlines as American Eagle Flight 5342, had flown from Wichita, Kansas, carrying 60 passengers and four crew members when it collided with a Black Hawk helicopter that was on a training flight.
The helicopter was believed to be carrying three soldiers, with no senior army officials onboard. The Black Hawk helicopter involved in the crash was based at Fort Belvoir, Virginia.
The Skating Club of Boston has confirmed that several of its members were onboard the American Airlines flight when it collided with the army helicopter. In a statement on Instagram, Doug Zeghibe, the CEO of the club, said: “Of the skaters, coaches and parents on the plane, we believe six were from the Skating Club of Boston. We are devastated and completely at a loss for words.”
The Kremlin has also confirmed that the figure skaters Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov were onboard. The pair, who were married, won the world championships in pairs figure skating in 1994 and lived in the US.
The pilot and first officer on the American Airlines were named as Jonathan Campos and Sam Lilley in media reports. Campos was 34 and Lilley 28, it was reported.
Temperatures in the area were below freezing, and any length of time spent in the water would be extremely dangerous for anyone who survived the initial incident, with hypothermia setting in quickly.
Inflatable boats and dive teams searched the site, with helicopters circling above, and large floodlights illuminating the scene from the shore. The operations were made more difficult by strong gusts of wind as well as the cold.
Donnelly, the DC fire and EMS chief, said: “The challenges are access … There is wind, there [are] pieces of ice out there, so it’s just dangerous and hard to work in.”
Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, said the Pentagon had launched an investigation. He added that the army helicopter crew involved in the collision was “fairly experienced”. Describing the flight as an “annual proficiency training flight”, Hegseth said: “They did have night vision goggles.”
The transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, said on Thursday that there was not a breakdown in communication between the plane, the military helicopter and air traffic control. “Everything was standard in the lead-up to the crash,” he said, adding that military helicopters use those flight paths every single day.
The American Airlines CEO, Robert Eisen, said: “At this time we don’t know why the military aircraft came into the path of the PSA aircraft.” He urged friends and family of those affected to call 1-800-679-8215, which is the helpline the airline has set up.
