By Hallie Golden, Associated Press
Arlington, Va. (AP) – A plane with 60 passengers and four crew members collided with an army helicopter Wednesday while approaching Ronald Reagan National Airport near Washington. The plane collapsed on the Potomac River. All on board were feared dead, authorities said Thursday.
The accident occurred in some of the most closely controlled and monitored air spaces in the world, just over 3 miles south of the White House and the Capitol of the United States.
Here are some things that you should know about collision:
The accident
The accident in the air occurred around 9 pm when a regional plane at the end of a flight from Wichita, Kansas, crashed with a military helicopter in a training exercise, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
A few minutes before the plane landed, the air traffic controllers asked the 5342 flight of American Airlines if it could land on a shorter track, and the pilots agreed. The controllers cleared the JET so that the landing and flight tracking sites showed that the plane will adjust its approach to the new track.
Less than 30 seconds before the accident, an air traffic controller asked a helicopter if he had the plane that came to view. The controller made another radio call to the helicopter moments later: “Pat 25 passes behind the CRJ.” There was no answer. Seconds after that, the two planes collided.
The plane’s radio transpondor stopped transmitting approximately 2,400 feet without the track, approximately in the Potomac middle.
The body of the plane was found backwards in three sections in waters to the waist, authorities said. The remains of the helicopter were also found.
Emergency response
The authorities were carrying out a massive search and rescue operation. Inflatable boats were thrown to the river and the first to respond placed towers of light from the shore to illuminate the area. The helicopters of the application agencies throughout the region also flew on the scene in a methodical search for bodies and survivors.
“Now we are at the point where we are changing a rescue operation to a recovery operation,” said Washington firefighters John Donnelly, at a press conference on Thursday morning. “We don’t believe there are survivors.”
Passengers and deaths
At least 28 bodies were taken from the frozen waters of the Potomac River.
The authorities said they were still looking for other victims, but did not believe there were survivors, which would make him the deadliest of an American plane crash in almost 24 years.
The Russian Shagenia Shagenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov were aboard the plane, along with other Russian nationals, according to the Kremlin. The coaches, skaters and others had been in Wichita for the 2025 artistic skating championships, which ended on Sunday and a development camp.
Shishkova and Naumov married and won a 1994 World Championship in artistic skating couples.
Airport
Located along the Potomac River, just southwest of Washington, Reagan National, is a popular option because it is much closer to the city than the largest International Airport in Dulles.
All the take -offs and landings of the Reagan airport were stopped. It will be reopened at 11 am on Thursday, the Federal Aviation Administration announced.
Investigation
Researchers will try to build the final moments of the aircraft before its collision, including contact with air traffic controlle, as well as a loss of altitude by the passenger plane.
Plane involved
The helicopter was a Blackhawk UH-60 based in Fort Belvoir in Virginia, according to the United States army. A team of three soldiers was aboard the helicopter, said an army official.
The other plane was a Bombardier CRJ-701 manufacturing Canadian plane and was manufactured in 2004. It can be configured to transport up to 70 passengers.
Fatal aircraft shock history
Fatal accidents of commercial aircraft In the United States they have become a rarity. The last one was in 2009 near Buffalo, New York. The 45 passengers and the four crew members were killed when the Bombardier DHC-8 propeller plane crashed into a house. A person on the ground was also killed.
The incident on Wednesday recalled the accident of an Air Florida flight that collapsed at the Potomac on January 13, 1982, killing 78 people. That clash was attributed to bad weather.
