All 64 people on board an American Airlines jet that collided with an Army helicopter are feared dead in what is likely to be the worst US aviation disaster in almost quarter of a century, officials said.
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 on Wednesday as it was landing at Ronald Reagan National Airport near Washington, officials said.
The plane carried 60 passengers and four crew. Three soldiers were aboard the helicopter.
“We don’t believe there are any survivors,” said John Donnelly, the fire chief in the nation’s capital.
“We are now at the point where we are switching from a rescue operation to a recovery operation.”
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.
If no-one survived, the collision would be the deadliest US air crash since 2001.
There was no immediate word on the cause of the collision, but officials said flight conditions were clear as the jet arrived from Wichita, Kansas, with US and Russian figure skaters and others aboard.
“On final approach into Reagan National, it collided with a military aircraft on an otherwise normal approach,” American Airlines CEO Robert Isom said.
“At this time, we don’t know why the military aircraft came into the path of the … aircraft.”
But he spent most of his time casting political blame, lashing out at the Biden 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, Mr 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”.
Flights resumed at the airport shortly after 11am on Thursday. But many flights had been cancelled, and airport information boards were covered in red cancellation messages. Other flights were delayed until late morning or afternoon.
“Can I guarantee the American flying public that the United States has the most safe and secure airspace in the world? And the answer to that is, absolutely yes, we do,” he said.
The night was clear, the plane and helicopter were both in standard flight patterns and there was standard communication between the aircraft and the tower, Mr Duffy said.
“We have early indicators of what happened here,” Mr Duffy said, though he declined to elaborate pending an investigation.
It is not unusual to have a military aircraft flying the river and an aircraft landing at the airport, he said. Asked if the plane was aware that there was a helicopter in the area, Mr Duffy said the helicopter was aware that there was a plane in the area.
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 US Figure Skating Championships in Wichita.
“We are devastated by this unspeakable tragedy and hold the victims’ families closely in our hearts,” US Figure Skating said in a statement.
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.
Club CEO Doug Zeghibe described the group as highly talented, saying their loss would resonate through the skating community for years.
“Folks are just stunned by this,” Mr Zeghibe said. “They are like family to us.”
The FAA said the mid-air crash occurred before 9pm EST 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.
American Airlines Flight 5342 was inbound to Reagan National at an altitude of about 400 feet and a speed of about 140 mph when it rapidly lost altitude over the Potomac River, according to data from its radio transponder.
The Canadian-made Bombardier CRJ-701 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, a UH-60 Blackhawk, 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 plane’s transponder stopped transmitting about 2,400 feet short of the runway, roughly over the middle of the river.
