A passenger jet with 60 passengers and four crew members collided in the air with a military helicopter late Wednesday when he ended up at the Ronald Reagan National Airport in Virginia near Washington, DC.
The US army described the helicopter as UH-60 Black Hawk in Fort Belvoir in Virginia. A crew of three soldiers was on board the helicopter, said an army official. The helicopter was on a training flight.
“At this point we do not believe that there are survivors,” said John Donnelly, head of Washington DC Fire and Ems, at a press conference on Thursday morning. He said that the responders switched to a recovery mission.
President Donald Trump in the White House also said that nobody survived the crash.
John Donnelly, Fire and EMS boss in Washington, DC, says that after a fatal collision between a passenger plane and a helicopter of the army, the officials change rescue to recovery.
First aiders recovered the corpses of 28 people from the plane, from American Airlines Jet, who collided with the helicopter, officers said.
About 300 first aiders were on site. Flatible rescue boats were introduced from a point along the George Washington Parkway Parkway north of the airport into the river, and first aiders set light towers from the shore to illuminate the area near the collision location.
In a reaction to CBC News, Global Affairs Canada said that “no Canadian on board the AA 5342 flight, which has expired from Wichita, Kansas,”.
Officials confused about what went wrong
The conditions were clear at the time of the crash, said new secretary Sean Duffy.
“We will not rest until we have answers to the families and the flying public,” he said.
The body of the aircraft was inverted in hip deep water in three sections. The helicopter wreck was also found. According to Donnelly, the first aiders searched for an area of the Potomac River on Thursday, which spans about five kilometers.
“At this point we do not know why the military aircraft came on the way of … aircraft.” said Robert Isom, CEO of American Airlines. He expressed “deep grief” for the crash and said that the company focused on the needs of passengers, crew, first aiders and families and relatives of the participants.
The film material of a CCTV camera noticed the moment of impact when a passenger plane and a helicopter of the US Army collided. Audio from air traffic control now has now recorded some of the immediate consequences of the collision.
Trump in the White House said it was a “time of fear” for the nation and the victims belonged to people from several countries.
But the US President then started in expanded remarks about the cause of the crash without evidence and seemed to blame the helicopter pilots and democratic politics in federal authorities at various points.
Without evidence, Trump found that the diversity of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had undermined the agency.
The democratic chairman of the Senate, Chuck Schumer of New York, said Trump’s comments on the crash “turns her stomach”.
“It is one thing for Internet experts to spit out of conspiracy theories. It is different for the President of the United States,” said Schumer.
Figure Skating community destroyed
The passengers of the flight included a group of characters, their trainers and family members who returned from a development camp that followed the US skating championships in Wichita.
“We are destroyed by this unspeakable tragedy and keep the families of the victims closely in our hearts,” said US ice skating in an explanation.
The spokesman for Kremlin, Dmitry Peskov, confirmed to the reporters on Thursday that the former Russian skater Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov were on the plane. Shishkova and Naumov, who are now a coach in Boston, won the Pairs title in 1994 1994 and Skate Canada in 1995.
Her son Maxim Naumov is a competitive figure skater. He was not on the flight after he had flown from Kansas on Monday.
“People are only stunned,” said Doug Zeghibe, CEO of the Skating Club of Boston, where they were busy. “You are like a family for us.” According to Zeghibe, six people associated with the club were killed by 16-year-old Jinna Han and the Spencer Lane and the mothers of these two skaters.
In Russia Peskov said that “there were other fellow citizens” without stipping.
“We are sorry and the families and friends who have lost those of our fellow citizens who died during the plane crash,” he said.
“Did you see that?”
Investigators will try to put together the last moments of the aircraft before their collision at around 9 p.m., including contact with air traffic controls and a height of the height by the passenger jet. American Airlines Flight 5342 was met at a height of about 120 meters and a speed of about 225 km/h to Reagan nationally when he suffered a rapid height above the Potomac flow.
The Bombardier CRJ-701 twin engine jet made in Canada was manufactured in 2004 and can be configured in such a way that they wear up to 70 passengers.
The National Transportation Safety Board, the FAA and the US Army are all examining, whereby the NTSB takes on the main role.
Abadi Ismail heard the collision of a regional passenger jet of American Airlines and a Black Hawk helicopter of the US Army near Reagan Washington National Airport and says it is like something from a war zone.
A few minutes before the landing, air traffic controllers asked the arriving trading jet whether he could land nationally on Reagan on the shorter runway 33, and the pilots said they could do so. Controllers then cleared the aircraft on runway 33. The pacifiers showed that the aircraft stopped rapprochement with the new runway.
In the audio from the air traffic control tower at the time of the crash, a controller in relation to the passenger aircraft is asked a controller in which he asked the helicopter “PAT25 in sight”.
“Did you see that?” Another pilot will call seconds after the apparent collision.
The tower immediately started to distract other aircraft from the airport.
In recent years, only a few US air disasters in the United States
The video of an observation camera in the nearby Kennedy Center shows two light rates that match aircraft that are apparently connected to a fireball.
Ronald Reagan National Airport should be reopened on Thursday, although the airport advised passengers to check their flight status because some flights would be delayed or canceled.
Military aircraft often carry out training flights in and around the overloaded and severely restricted airspace around the country’s capital for the inclusion and continuity of government planning. Nine soldiers were killed in 2023 when two US helicopters of the US Army Black Hawk Medical Evacuation had crashed in Kentucky during a night training near Fort Campbell.
The last major fatal crash with a US trade airline occurred in 2009 near Buffalo, in which everyone was killed on board the Bombardier DHC-8 propeller aircraft, including 45 passengers, two pilots and two flight attendants. Another person on site also died and brought the total fatalities to 50.
The deadliest American Airlines Crash this century took place on November 12, 2001 when an Airbus aircraft crashed shortly after the start in New York City. All 260 people on board the flight on the way to the Dominican Republic were killed.
On January 13, 1982, a Florida flight sank into the Potomac and killed 78 people. This crash was attributed to bad weather.
