Sixty-seven people died after an American Airlines regional passenger jet collided with a US Army Black Hawk helicopter and crashed into the frigid Potomac River near Reagan Washington National Airport late on Wednesday, officials said.
The Bombardier jet operated by an American Airlines subsidiary, had been carrying 64 people, while the army Blackhawk helicopter had three soldiers aboard. Wreckage of both the jet and the helicopter was in the river, as police divers searched for more bodies under water.
“At this point we do not believe there were any survivors,” District of Columbia fire chief John Donnelly said at a Thursday press conference. “We are now at a point where we are switching from a rescue operation to a recovery operation,” Donnelly added.
Speaking at the White House President Donald Trump confirmed the death of all the 67 passengers aboard the jet and the helicopter and launched an extraordinary political attack, blaming diversity hires for the tragedy.
Officials told Reuters that helicopter flights had been paused for the Army unit involved in the incident. Passengers on the flight included ice skaters, family and coaches returning from events in Wichita, Kansas, including Russian-born former world champions Yevgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov.
The collision—the first major crash in the United States since 2009 when 49 people were killed near Buffalo, New York—occurred as the airliner came in to land at Reagan National Airport after a routine flight from Wichita
Radio communications showed the helicopter crew knew the plane was in the vicinity. Dramatic audio from air traffic controllers showed them repeatedly asking the helicopter if it had the passenger jet “in sight,” and then just before the crash telling it to “pass behind” the plane.
US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said both the helicopter and the airplane had been flying standard flight patterns, and there had been no breakdown in communication. “Everything was standard in the lead-up to the crash,” he said. “Do I think this was preventable? Absolutely.”
Reagan National is a major airport located a short distance from downtown Washington, the White House and the Pentagon. Officials have raised concerns about busy runways at the airport, just across the river from Washington.
Airspace is frequently crowded in the US capital region, home to three commercial airports and several major military facilities. There have been several near-miss incidents that have sparked alarm, including a near-collision in May 2024.
The PSA Airlines, a regional subsidiary of American Airlines CEO Robert Isom said the pilot had about six years of flying experience. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said the helicopter was flown by a “fairly experienced crew” that was wearing night-vision goggles on an annual proficiency training flight.
Trump used his press conference to launch a broadside against what he said were the left-wing diversity practices under his Democratic predecessors Joe Biden and Barack Obama that he claimed kept out good employees at the Federal Aviation Administration.
“I put safety first. Obama, Biden and the Democrats put policy first,” Trump said. “They actually came out with a directive: ‘too white.’ And we want the people that are competent. We have to have our smartest people. They have to be naturally talented geniuses.”
Trump opened his press conference by speaking of the nation’s “anguish” and said that the investigation would take time. “We do not know what led to this crash, but we have some very strong opinions and ideas,” Trump said.
The deceased skaters were returning from a training camp in Wichita, governing body US Figure Skating said. “Skating is a very close-knit and tight community,” said a tearful Doug Zeghibe of the Skating Club of Boston, where Shishkova and Naumov coached.
Two teenaged skaters affiliated with the club and their mothers were also aboard the plane, he told reporters. Russia’s Mash news outlet published a list of 13 skaters, many of them the children of Russian emigres to the US, who it said were believed to have been on the plane.
Washington DC fire chief Donnelly said conditions were cold and windy, making the operation “extremely rough” for the 300 responders on the scene. CBS News reported that a dive team had recovered one of the two data recorders, the so-called black boxes, from the plane.
