BBC News
No survivor is expected after a passenger plane collided in the air with a helicopter near Ronald Reagan airport from Washington DC on Wednesday evening.
The plane carried 64 passengers and the crew when he crashed into the Potomac river after the collision. The helicopter had three people on board, who were described as a “fairly experienced crew” by the defense secretary Pete Hegseth.
The artistic skaters of the United States and Russia were one of the passengers of the plane, according to officials of the figure skating and a Boston club.
The authorities seeking freezing waters say that they have gone to a recovery operation.
What happened?
Around 9:00 p.m. local time (02:00 GMT) Wednesday, a PSA Airlines jet operating while American Airlines 5342 collided with an American army helicopter as Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport approaches, according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
The passenger plane broke into several pieces and sank into the river with several feet, while the helicopter found itself upside down on the water.
The plane, a CRJ700 bomber, left Wichita, Kansas and transported 60 passengers and four crews, said American Airlines.
According to the updates of the officials, the helicopter was a Sikorsky H-60 who took off from very Belvoir in Virginia with three soldiers on board, and belonged to B Company, 12th Aviation Battalion.
HegSeth said the plane was on an annual flight flight and carried out a night assessment. He said they had night vision glasses. The Secretary of Defense said that names and ranks were retained until their closest parent was informed.
The recordings of air traffic control conversations published online suggest that a checked attempted to warn the American Airlines plane helicopter in the seconds before the collision.
The helicopter pilot seems to answer to confirm that they are aware of the plane, but a few moments later, the two planes crashed.
Transport secretary Sean Duffy told journalists on Thursday: “I would say that the helicopter was aware that there was an airplane in the region.”
The FAA said it would investigate the incident, with the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). Hegseth said he expected that it quickly establishes if the helicopter was flying in the corridor and the right altitude.
How many victims are there?
DC Fire and EMS chief John Donelly said in an update on Thursday morning that civil servants “do not believe that there were survivors of this accident”.
He said that the teams had recovered 27 bodies from the plane and one of the helicopter.
A source of application of the law familiar with the investigation earlier told CBS that a higher number of at least 30 organizations had already been found.
American figure skating said that “several members of our skating community were unfortunately on board” the flight. He said this group included athletes, coaches and family members who returned home from a development camp in Kansas.
The Russian citizens were also on board, confirmed the Kremlin – after the local media reported that the ice skate coaches and the former world champions Yevgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naunov were on the plane.
About 300 stakeholders on rubber boats were deployed earlier to search for survivors, Donelly said in a previous update. “The challenge is access, there is wind, pieces of ice (on the water). It is dangerous and difficult to work,” he said.
What do the eyewitnesses say?
Ari Schulman told NBC Washington that he had seen the plane crashed by driving on the George Washington Parkway, which runs along the airport.
He said that the approach of the plane seemed normal, until it sees the hard plane bank on the right, with “streams of sparks” run below, illuminating its belly.
At that time, he said he knew it looked “very, very badly”. Having seen plane landings in the past, he said that the underside of an aircraft should not have been visible in the dark.
The sparks, he said, looked like a “giant Roman candle” and went from the nose of the plane to its tail.
Jimmy Mazeo said he saw the accident by dinner with his girlfriend in a park near the airport.
He remembers seeing what looked like a “white push” in the sky. He said flying planes in Ronald Reagan airport seemed to have stolen in “irregular models”.
Mr. Mazeo said he did not think much of what he had seen until the emergency services started to arrive at the scene.
What does President Trump say?
At a press conference on Thursday, the president said the country was “in mourning”.
He also took the opportunity to make a blow on his political enemies, which he accused of hiring “mediocre” staff for air traffic control jobs. He repeated his attacks on efforts under former president Joe Biden to promote diversity within the federal workforce, suggesting that the standards of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had been reduced.
Trump said that he and his team had “opinions and well -placed ideas” on what had happened, but admitted that the investigation was at an early stage.
He also announced that he called Chris Rocheleau as a temporary chief of the FAA. The best job there as well as the assistant administrator and administrator positions have been vacant since Trump took office.
What is the American record for air security?
The main incidents of this type are relatively rare in the United States. The most recent comparable accident took place in 2009, according to a list compiled by Reuters.
That year, an airplane crashed as the landing in Buffalo, New York, killing the 49 people on board and a person on the ground, approach.
The airspace above Washington DC is both busy and very controlled. It is used by national and international traffic using two airports, and there are additional factors of presidential flights, heavy military traffic and flights around the Pentagon.
Passenger line planes must follow the fixed flight plans, said the BBC transport correspondent Sean Dilley. In uncontrolled airspace, military pilots operate under strict instruction of air traffic controllers, but unlike their civil counterparts, they have the freedom to divert and a duty to “see and avoid” other planes .
