A U.S. passenger jet with 64 people on board crashed into Washington’s Potomac River on Wednesday night after a midair collision with a military helicopter during a training exercise, sparking a frantic search for survivors in the freezing waters.
Rescue boats and divers scoured the freezing waters of Washington’s Potomac River Thursday, in an increasingly desperate search for any survivors.
As dawn broke over the crash site and with U.S. media reporting the recovery of multiple bodies, emergency vessels with powerful arc lights and inflatables with diving teams could be seen moving back and forth over a wide area of the river.
Nearly 12 hours into the rescue operation, most of which was carried out in pitch darkness, there was no word of any survivors being found.
“We’re going to be out there as long as it takes,” Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser told reporters.
Citing local sources, CBS News said at least 19 bodies had been recovered, while NBC reported 30.
U.S. Figure Skating said several athletes, coaches and officials were aboard the flight, while officials in Moscow confirmed married Russian couple Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov – who won the 1994 world pairs title – were on the jet.
The Bombardier plane operated by an American Airlines subsidiary, with 60 passengers and four crew on board, was approaching Reagan National Airport at around 9 p.m. (2 a.m. GMT) after flying from Wichita, Kansas, when the collision happened.
US Army officials said the helicopter involved was a Black Hawk carrying three soldiers on a “training flight.”
Both aircraft crashed into the river.
Dramatic audio from air traffic controllers showed them repeatedly asking the helicopter if it had the passenger jet “in sight,” and then just before the crash telling it to “pass behind” the plane.
“I just saw a fireball and it was gone,” one air traffic controller was heard telling another after communication with the helicopter was cut.
Witness Ari Schulman was driving home when he saw what he described as “a stream of sparks” overhead.
“Initially I saw the plane and it looked fine, normal. It was right about to head over land,” he told CNN.
“Three seconds later, and at that point it was banked all the way to the right… I could see the underside of it, it was lit up a very bright yellow, and there was a stream of sparks underneath it,” Schulman added. “It looked like a Roman candle.”
Trump slams traffic control
President Donald Trump said in an official statement that he had been “fully briefed” and said of any victims, “may God bless their souls.”
But less than four hours after the disaster – and while other officials stressed they were waiting for investigations to unfold – he returned to social media to critique the air traffic control.
“The airplane was on a perfect and routine line of approach to the airport. The helicopter was going straight at the airplane for an extended period of time. It is a CLEAR NIGHT, the lights on the plane were blazing,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
“Why didn’t the helicopter go up or down, or turn. Why didn’t the control tower tell the helicopter what to do instead of asking if they saw the plane. This is a bad situation that looks like it should have been prevented. NOT GOOD!!!”
The Federal Aviation Administration ordered the grounding of all planes at Reagan National and the airport was not due to reopen until 11 a.m. (4 p.m. GMT) Thursday.
American Airlines’ chief executive issued a video statement in which he expressed “deep sorrow,” while U.S. Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas called the collision “nothing short of a nightmare.”
Crowded airspace
Questions were expected to focus on how a passenger plane with modern collision-avoidance technology and nearby traffic controllers could collide with a military aircraft over the nation’s capital.
The airspace around Washington is often crowded, with planes coming in low over the city to land at Reagan airport and helicopters – military, civilian and carrying senior politicians or officials – buzzing about both day and night.
The same airport was the scene of a deadly crash in January 1982 when Air Florida Flight 90, a Boeing 737, took off but quickly plummeted, hitting the 14th Street bridge and crashing through the ice into the Potomac River. Seventy-eight people died.
Investigators concluded the pilot had failed to activate sufficient de-icing procedures.
The last major fatal U.S. air accident was in 2009, when Continental Flight 3407 from New Jersey to Buffalo, New York crashed and killed all 49 people aboard.
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