WASHINGTON — Sixty-four people aboard a commercial airliner died Wednesday after it collided with a military helicopter midair near Reagan Washington National Airport.
Both the American Eagle jet and Army Black Hawk are in the Potomac River. The Black Hawk had three personnel onboard.
The collision occurred shortly before 9 p.m. ET.
President Donald Trump called the deadly collision a “a tragedy of terrible proportions” and said there were no survivors as he addressed reporters in the White House briefing room Thursday morning.
What we know about the plane
There were 60 passengers and four crew members on American Eagle Flight 5342, which was traveling from Wichita to Reagan National Airport in Arlington, Virginia, just over the Washington line, according to American Airlines.
The crash took place near the airport.
The flight number, 5432, will be retired, American Airlines said. Retiring flight numbers is a common practice following major aviation accidents.
What we know about the helicopter
The Army confirmed the helicopter was a Black Hawk operating out of Fort Belvoir, Virginia.
Military officials described the three soldiers on board as a very experienced crew that included an instructor pilot with more than 1,000 flight hours.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the crew was “fairly experienced” and completing an “annual proficiency training flight” at the time of the collision.
Hegseth said the crew members were from the Bravo Company 12th Aviation Battalion at Fort Belvoir, an army base in Virginia that’s about 14 miles away from the airport.
No survivors from crash
All passengers and crew on both aircraft are presumed dead. Dozens of bodies have been recovered from the Potomac River amid a major recovery effort.
The flight carried 28 members of the figure skating community, Samuel Auxier, interim CEO of U.S. Figure Skating said in a statement Sunday. The victims included several elite figure skaters from both the U.S. and Russia who were traveling back from a competition in Wichita.
Doug Zeghibe, CEO of The Skating Club of Boston, said 14 skaters returning home from the national development camp in Wichita, Kansas, were killed in the crash.
Of those, six were from The Skating Club of Boston — two coaches, two teenage athletes and the athletes’ mothers. Those six were identified as athlete Jinna Han; Jinna’s mother, Jin Han; athlete Spencer Lane; Spencer’s mother, Christine Lane; and coaches Vadim Naumov and Evgenia Shishkova.
As many as 14 of the victims, including skaters, coaches and family members, were part of the Ashburn Ice House and MedStar Capitals Iceplex community in Virginia.
Three of the crash victims were Russian nationals, including Shishkova and Naumov, former world champions in pair skating, and Inna Volyanskaya, according to the Russian Embassy. The Chinese Embassy in Washington said two Chinese nationals were killed in the crash.
More details are also emerging about the crew on the jet and the helicopter.
By Saturday, officials said that 42 sets of remains had been recovered. Divers joined by National Transportation Safety Board teams are continuing recovery efforts.
D.C. Fire and EMS Chief John Donnelly said in a news conference Friday that all bodies in the Potomac River are expected to be recovered, adding that the plane’s fuselage will need to be removed to guarantee access to additional remains.
The investigation into the crash
The National Transportation Safety Board is leading the investigation. The Federal Aviation Administration and the U.S. Army will also be involved in the investigation. The process can take a year or longer.
The NTSB said its investigators recovered the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder from the plane, and the black boxes are at a lab for evaluation. Todd Inman, NTSB board member on scene, said he expects they will be able to recover all the data on both devices.
The agency said Friday it also recovered the black box from the military Black Hawk helicopter and expects a “full extraction” of data from the device.
Weather and communication did not appear to be issues when the crash occurred Wednesday night, as skies were clear and pilots were in communication with air traffic control.
Aviation experts say investigators will focus on several elements, including the dialogue with air traffic control, any possible missteps by the pilots, and the helicopter flight.
Some aviation experts noted that two facts are key to solving the mystery of what led to the crash: understanding what happened inside the Black Hawk and learning at exactly what altitude it was flying when it collided with the jet.
The NTSB is the only agency authorized to provide an official cause for the crash.
Both the plane and the helicopter were being flown by experienced pilots who had “standard communication” with air traffic control when they crashed, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told reporters.
A source with knowledge of the situation told NBC News that at the time of the crash, there was one controller in the air traffic control tower focused on both helicopters and airplanes, according to a preliminary internal FAA safety report on the collision. Usually, the tower has a separate controller who deals exclusively with helicopter traffic. FAA safety standards allow for the combined position.
Inman said Saturday that there were five people staffing the air traffic control tower at the time. They included the local controller who was directing helicopter and fixed-wing aircraft; a local assistant controller assigned to helping the local controller with things like receiving and analyze data in real time; a ground controller handling all aircraft and vehicles not on the runway; an operations supervisor; and an operations supervisor in training.
Trump sparked controversy when he implied at a news conference that diversity, equity and inclusion policies may have been the cause of the crash, although an investigation into the fatal disaster has only just begun.
“We have to have our smartest people” as air traffic controllers, Trump said Thursday morning. “It doesn’t matter what they look like, how they speak, who they are. ...They have to be talented, naturally talented. Geniuses. Can’t have regular people doing their job."
