Rescuers scouring the Potomac River in Washington DC after an American Airlines jet carrying 64 people collided with a US army Black Hawk helicopter on approach to ReaganNational airport on Wednesday night have recovered 27 bodies from the water and believe no one survived the crash.
The midair collision occurred at about 9pm on Wednesday when American Airlines flight 5342 – a regional jet carrying 60 passengers and four crew members that had departed from Wichita, Kansas – collided with the helicopter while on approach to an airport runway. Three soldiers were aboard the Black Hawk, which was on a training flight.
All takeoffs and landings from the airport near the capital were halted as helicopters from law enforcement agencies across the region flew over the scene in search of survivors.
But on Thursday morning, John A Donnelly, the DC fire EMS chief , said: “We don’t believe there are any survivors”, adding that 27 bodies had been recovered from the plane, and one from the helicopter. One of the plane’s black box recorders has also been found by divers.
Donnelly said the crash alert had sounded at 8.48pm on Wednesday and that first responders had been faced with “extremely frigid conditions. They found heavy wind. They found ice on the water, and they’ve operated all night in those conditions”.
The emergencies chief also said he was confident that all the bodies would be recovered. It will take us a little bit of time,” he said. “It may involve some more equipment.”
The collision took place in some of the most tightly controlled and monitored airspace in the world, just over three miles south of the White House and the Capitol.
Sean Duffy, the transportation secretary, said the plane was found inverted, in three sections, in waist-deep water.
He said he did not want to be drawn into speculation about causes of the crash, stressing that military helicopters used the flight paths every single day.
“Something went wrong here,” he said, adding: “I look forward to the time and point where we can give you that information, but I don’t want to comment on that right now.”
Among the passengers on the plane were athletes, coaches and family members associated with the US figure-skating programme, its governing body confirmed. They were returning from attending a national development camp held in conjunction with the US figure-skating championships.
The military helicopter was participating in a training flight, NBC and Reuters reported. “We can confirm that the aircraft involved in tonight’s incident was an army UH-60 helicopter from Bravo Company, 12th Aviation Battalion, out of Davison army airfield, Fort Belvoir, during a training flight,” a military official told NBC, adding more details would be provided once available.
Donald Trump said in a statement he had been “fully briefed on this terrible accident” and, referring to the passengers, added: “May God bless their souls.” In a subsequent social media post, the president said the crash “should have been prevented”.
The Kremlin expressed its condolences after it emerged that the Russian figure-skating couple Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, who won the 1994 world pairs title and who lived in the US, were on the plane.
Flight 5342 was inbound to Reagan national airport at an altitude of about 400ft and a speed of about 140mph when there was a rapid loss of altitude over the Potomac River, according to data from its radio transponder. The Canadian-made Bombardier CRJ-701 twin-engine jet was manufactured in 2004 and can be configured to carry up to 70 passengers.
Audio from LiveATC.net, a respected source for in-flight recording, captured the final communications between the three crew members of the helicopter – call sign PAT25 – before it collided with the plane. 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.
The crash was witnessed by another plane, whose crew called in to the control tower, saying: “Tower, did you see that?”
One of the air traffic controllers can be heard saying: “Crash, crash, crash, this is an alert three.” Another controller then said: “Both the helicopter and the plane crashed in the river … I just saw a fireball and then it was just gone. I haven’t seen anything since they hit the river. But it was a CRJ and a helicopter that hit.”
The plane’s radio transponder stopped transmitting about 2,400ft short of the runway, roughly over the middle of the river. The Potomac River is about 8ft deep where the aircraft crashed.
The tower immediately began diverting other aircraft from Reagan.
Video from an observation camera at the nearby Kennedy Center showed two sets of lights consistent with aircraft appearing to join in a fireball.
Robert Isom, the chief executive of American Airlines, released a statement providing a phone number for relatives who believed they may have lost loved ones onboard the flight. “Our concern is for the passengers and crew onboard the aircraft,” he said. “We are in contact with authorities and assisting with emergency response efforts.”
On 13 January 1982, an Air Florida flight plummeted into the Potomac, killing 78 people.
The last fatal crash involving a US commercial airline occurred in 2009 near Buffalo, New York. Everyone onboard the Bombardier propeller plane was killed, including 45 passengers, two pilots and two flight attendants. Another person on the ground also died, bringing the total death toll to 50. An investigation determined that the captain accidentally caused the plane to stall as it approached the airport in Buffalo.
Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report
