BBC News
No survivors are expected after a passenger plane collided in midair with a helicopter near Washington DC’s Ronald Reagan airport on Wednesday evening.
The plane was carrying 64 passengers and crew when it crashed into the Potomac River after the collision. The helicopter had three people on board, who were labelled a “fairly experienced crew” by Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Figure skaters from the US and Russia were among passengers on the aeroplane, according to officials from US Figure Skating and a club in Boston.
Authorities searching the freezing waters say they have switched to a recovery operation.
What happened?
At about 21:00 local time (02:00 GMT) on Wednesday, a PSA Airlines jet operating as American Airlines 5342 collided with a US Army helicopter as it approached Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
The passenger plane broke into multiple pieces and sunk several feet into the river, while the helicopter ended up upside down on the water.
The plane, a Bombardier CRJ700, departed from Wichita, Kansas, and was carrying 60 passengers and four crew, American Airlines said.
According to updates from officials, the helicopter was a Sikorsky H-60 that took off from Fort Belvoir in Virginia with three soldiers on board, and belonged to B Company, 12th Aviation Battalion.
Hegseth said the aircraft was on an annual proficiency flight and performing a night evaluation. He said they had night-vision goggles. The defence secretary said names and ranks were being withheld until their next-of-kin had been informed.
Recordings of air traffic control conversations published online suggested that a controller tried to warn the helicopter about the American Airlines plane in the seconds before the collision.
The helicopter pilot appears to respond to confirm they are aware of the plane, but moments later the two aircrafts crashed.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told reporters on Thursday: “I would say the helicopter was aware there was a plane in the area.”
The FAA said it would investigate the incident, together with the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). Hegseth said he expected this to quickly establish whether the helicopter was flying in the right corridor and altitude.
How many victims are there?
DC Fire and EMS Chief John Donnelly said in a Thursday morning update that officials “don’t believe there are any survivors from this accident”.
He said teams had recovered 27 bodies from the plane, and one from the helicopter.
A law enforcement source familiar with the investigation earlier told CBS that a higher number of at least 30 bodies had already been found.
US Figure Skating said “several members of our skating community were sadly aboard” the flight. It said this group comprised athletes, coaches and family members who were returning home from a development camp in Kansas.
Russian citizens were also on board, the Kremlin confirmed – after local media reported that ice skating coaches and former world champions Yevgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov were on the plane.
About 300 responders on rubber boats were deployed to search for survivors, Donnelly said. “The challenge is access, there is wind, pieces of ice [on the water]. It is dangerous and hard to work in,” he said.
What are eyewitnesses saying?
Ari Schulman told NBC Washington that he saw the plane crash while he was driving on the George Washington Parkway, which runs alongside the airport.
He said the plane’s approach looked normal, until he saw it bank hard to the right, with “streams of sparks” running underneath, illuminating its belly.
At that point, he said he knew that it looked “very, very wrong”. Having seen plane landings there in the past, he said a plane’s underside should not have been visible in the dark.
The sparks, he said, resembled a “giant roman candle” and went from the plane’s nose to its tail.
Jimmy Mazeo said he saw the crash while having dinner with his girlfriend at a park near the airport.
He recalled seeing what looked like a “white flare” in the sky. He said planes approaching Ronald Reagan Airport appeared to have been flying in “irregular patterns”.
Mr Mazeo said he did not think much of what he saw until emergency services started arriving at the scene.
What has President Trump said?
In a press conference on Thursday, PresidentTrump said the country was “in mourning”.
He also took a swipe at his political foes, who he accused of hiring “mediocre” staff for air traffic control jobs. He repeated his attacks on efforts under former President Joe Biden to promote diversity within the federal workforce, suggesting standards at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had been lowered.
Trump said he and his team had “strong opinions and ideas” about what had happened, but acknowledged that the investigation was at an early stage.
He also announced he was appointing Chris Rocheleau as the temporary head of the FAA. The top job there, as well as the positions of administrator and deputy administrator, have been vacant since Trump took office.
How is air safety in the US?
Major incidents of this kind are relatively rare in the US. The most recent comparable crash was in 2009, according to a list compiled by Reuters.
That year, an aircraft crashed on approach to landing in Buffalo, New York, killing all 49 people on board and one person on the ground.
The airspace above Washington DC is both busy and highly controlled. It is used by domestic and international traffic using two airports, and there are extra factors of presidential flights, heavy military traffic and flights around the Pentagon.
Passenger airliners must follow fixed flight plans, said the BBC’s transport correspondent Sean Dilley. In uncontrolled airspace, military pilots operate under strict instruction of air traffic controllers but unlike their civilian counterparts, they have freedom to deviate and a duty to “see and avoid” other aircraft.
