Collision between helicopter and jetliner kills 67 in deadliest US air disaster in quarter century

ARLINGTON, Va. (AP) — A midair collision between an Army helicopter and an American Airlines flight killed all 67 people aboard the two aircraft, officials said Thursday, as they scrutinized the actions of the military pilot and reported that control tower staffing was “not normal” at the time of the country’s deadliest aviation disaster in almost a quarter century.

At least 28 bodies were pulled from the icy waters of the Potomac River after the helicopter apparently flew into the path of the jet late Wednesday while it was landing at Ronald Reagan National Airport, just across the river from Washington, officials said. The plane carried 60 passengers and four crew. Three soldiers were aboard the helicopter.

One air traffic controller was doing work normally assigned to two people in the tower when the collision happened, according to a report by the Federal Aviation Administration obtained by The Associated Press.

“The position configuration was not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic,” the report said.

President Donald Trump told a White House news conference that no one survived.

“We are now at the point where we are switching from a rescue operation to a recovery operation,” said John Donnelly, the fire chief in the nation’s capital.

The plane was found upside-down in three sections in waist-deep water, and first responders were searching an area of the Potomac as far south as the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, roughly 3 miles (4.8 kilometers) south of the airport, Donnelly said. The helicopter wreckage was also found. Images from the river showed boats around the partly submerged wing and the mangled wreckage of the plane’s fuselage.

The collision was the deadliest U.S. air crash since 2001.

Officials said flight conditions were clear as the jet arrived from Wichita, Kansas.

“On final approach into Reagan National, it collided with a military aircraft on an otherwise normal approach,” American Airlines CEO Robert Isom said.

A top Army aviation official said the Black Hawk crew was “very experienced” and familiar with the congested flying that occurs daily around Washington.

“Both pilots had flown this specific route before, at night. This wasn’t something new to either one of them,” said Jonathan Koziol, chief of staff for Army aviation.

The helicopter’s maximum allowed altitude at the time of the crash was 200 feet above ground, Koziol said. It was not immediately clear whether the helicopter exceeded that limit, but Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that altitude seemed to be a factor in the collision.

Koziol said investigators need to analyze the flight data before making conclusions about altitude.

“Both aircraft will have recorders on board that will give us all of that information once we recover it, to give us the real truth on what those aircraft were doing,” he said.

Trump opened the White House news conference after the crash with a moment of silence honoring the victims, calling it an “hour of anguish” for the country.

But he spent most of his time casting political blame, lashing out at former President Joe Biden’s administration and diversity efforts at the Federal Aviation Administration, saying they had led to slipping standards — even as he acknowledged that the cause of the crash was unknown.

Without evidence, Trump blamed air traffic controllers, the helicopter pilots and Democratic policies at federal agencies. He claimed the FAA was “actively recruiting workers who suffer severe intellectual disabilities, psychiatric problems, and other mental and physical conditions under a diversity and inclusion hiring initiative.”

Inside Reagan National Airport, the mood was somber Thursday as stranded passengers waited for flights to resume, sidestepping camera crews and staring out the terminal’s windows at the Potomac, where recovery efforts were barely visible in the distance.

Aster Andemicael had been at the airport since Wednesday evening with her elderly father, who was flying to Indiana to visit family. She spent much of the long night thinking about the victims and their families.

“I’ve been crying since yesterday,” she said, her voice cracking. “This is devastating.”

Flights resumed at the airport around midday.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who was sworn in earlier this week, said there were “early indicators of what happened.” He declined to elaborate.

The deadliest plane crash since November 2001

Wednesday’s crash was the deadliest in the U.S. since Nov. 12, 2001, when an American Airlines flight crashed into a residential area of Belle Harbor, New York, just after takeoff from Kennedy Airport, killing all 260 people aboard.

The last major fatal crash involving a U.S. commercial airline occurred in 2009 near Buffalo, New York. Everyone aboard the Bombardier DHC-8 propeller plane was killed, along with one person on the ground, bringing the total death toll to 50.

Experts often highlight that plane travel is overwhelmingly safe. The National Safety Council estimates that Americans have a 1-in-93 chance of dying in a motor vehicle crash, while deaths on airplanes are too rare to calculate the odds. Figures from the Department of Transportation tell a similar story.

Passengers on Wednesday’s flight included a group of figure skaters, their coaches and family members who were returning from a development camp that followed the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Wichita.

Two of those coaches were identified by the Kremlin as Russian figure skaters Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, who won the pairs title at the 1994 world championships and competed twice in the Olympics. The Skating Club of Boston lists them as coaches and their son, Maxim Naumov, is a competitive figure skater for the U.S.

Club CEO Doug Zeghibe said their loss would resonate through the skating community for years.

“Folks are just stunned by this,” Zeghibe said. “They are like family to us.”

Tragedy stuns Wichita

The crash devastated Wichita, the Kansas city that prides itself on being in America’s heartland. It hosted the figure skating championships this year for the first time.

The city has been a major hub for the aircraft industry since the early days of commercial flight, and it is home to the U.S. headquarters for Bombardier, which manufactured the jetliner. So many regional workers have jobs tied to the industry that the area economy slumps when sales dip.

After the crash, several hundred people gathered in the city council chambers for a prayer vigil led by Mayor Lily Wu and religious leaders.

Carla Lee, a retired Wichita State University nursing professor, brought a vase of red roses. She is set to go to Washington next week for a conference, taking the same flight.

“It hits you, how short life can be,” she said.

Collision happened in tightly controlled airspace

The FAA said the midair crash occurred before 9 p.m. EST in some of the most tightly controlled and monitored airspace in the world, just over 3 miles south of the White House and the Capitol.

American Airlines Flight 5342 was inbound to Reagan National at an altitude of about 400 feet (122 meters) and a speed of about 140 mph (225 kph) when it rapidly lost altitude over the Potomac, according to data from its radio transponder. The Canadian-made Bombardier CRJ-700 twin-engine jet, manufactured in 2004, can be configured to carry up to 70 passengers.

A few minutes before landing, air traffic controllers asked the arriving commercial jet if it could land on the shorter Runway 33 at Reagan National, and the pilots said they were able. Controllers then cleared the plane to land on Runway 33. Flight-tracking sites showed the plane adjust its approach to the new runway.

Less than 30 seconds before the crash, an air traffic controller asked the helicopter if it had the arriving plane in sight. The controller made another radio call to the helicopter moments later: “PAT 25, pass behind the CRJ.” Seconds after that, the two aircraft collided.