A mid-air collision between an American Airlines plane carrying 64 people and a military helicopter over Washington, DC, has left no survivors, US authorities said Thursday. In remarks from the White House, President Donald Trump said the accident marked an “hour of anguish" for the nation before blaming the pilots, diversity and Barack Obama for the tragedy.
Everyone aboard American Airlines jet that collided with an Army helicopter while landing at Ronald Reagan National Airport near Washington is feared dead, US authorities Thursday.
The Wednesday crash prompted a large search-and-rescue operation in the nearby Potomac River. The jet was carrying 60 passengers and four crew members.
The Bombadier plane operated by an American Airlines subsidiary was approaching Reagan National Airport at around 9pm (02:00 GMT) after flying from Wichita, Kansas, when the collision happened.
US Army officials said the helicopter involved was a Black Hawk carrying three soldiers on a "training flight".
Washington Fire Chief John Donnelly told a press briefing that emergency crews, totaling about 300 people, were working in "extremely rough" conditions and gave little indication they expected to find anyone alive.
At least 28 bodies have so far been recovered from the water, officials said.
"We're going to be out there as long as it takes," Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser told reporters.
The Federal Aviation Administration ordered the grounding of all planes at Reagan National until 11am local time.
US Figure Skating said several athletes, coaches and officials were aboard the flight, while officials in Moscow confirmed married Russian couple Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov – who won the 1994 world pairs title – were on the jet.
Witness Ari Schulman was driving home when he saw what he described as "a stream of sparks" overhead. "Initially I saw the plane and it looked fine, normal. It was right about to head over land," he told to the news.
"Three seconds later, and at that point it was banked all the way to the right ... I could see the underside of it, it was lit up a very bright yellow, and there was a stream of sparks underneath it," Schulman added.
"It looked like a Roman candle."
Trump blames air-traffic control, diversity, Obama
US President Donald Trump said in an official statement that he had been "fully briefed" and said of the victims: "May God bless their souls."
Less than four hours after the disaster – and while other officials stressed they were waiting for investigations to unfold – he took to social media to critique air-traffic control.
"The airplane was on a perfect and routine line of approach to the airport. The helicopter was going straight at the airplane for an extended period of time. It is a CLEAR NIGHT, the lights on the plane were blazing," Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
"Why didn't the helicopter go up or down, or turn. Why didn't the control tower tell the helicopter what to do instead of asking if they saw the plane," he posted. "This is a bad situation that looks like it should have been prevented. NOT GOOD!!!"
Speaking to reporters at the White House later in the day, Trump called the incident an "hour of anguish" for the nation before changing tack to blame "diversity" policies under presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden for poor safety standards.
Trump then falsely accused his Democratic predecessors of discriminating against White people.
"They actually came out with a directive: 'too White.' And we want the people that are competent," Trump said. When questioned, Trump admitted there was no evidence diversity was responsible for the collision. “It just could have been,” he insisted.
In fact, Biden signed a sweeping $105 billion aviation safety bill last year that increased air-traffic staffing and funding to avert runway close-calls.
Trump last week fired the heads of the Transportation Security Administration and the Coast Guard and eliminated all the members of the Aviation Security Advisory Committee.
The aviation security committee "will technically continue to exist", AP reported, "but it won’t have any members to carry out the work of examining safety issues at airlines and airports".
After the crash on Thursday Trump said he was appointing former senior aviation official Chris Rocheleau as acting head of the Federal Aviation Administration.
Staffing shortage
It was unclear how a passenger plane with modern collision-avoidance technology and nearby traffic controllers could collide with a military aircraft over the nation's capital.
The airspace around Washington is often crowded, with planes coming in low over the city to land at Reagan Airport and helicopters – military, civilian and carrying senior politicians or officials – buzzing about both day and night.
A preliminary internal Federal Aviation Administration report on the accident quoted by the New York Times on Thursday found that staffing was "not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic", with some key staffers doing double duty.
"The controller who was handling helicopters in the airport's vicinity Wednesday night was also instructing planes that were landing and departing from its runways," the report said.
"Those jobs typically are assigned to two controllers, rather than one."
The same airport was the scene of a deadly crash in January 1982 when Air Florida Flight 90, a Boeing 737, took off but quickly plummeted, hitting the 14th Street bridge and crashing through the ice into the Potomac River. Seventy-eight people died. Investigators concluded the pilot had failed to activate sufficient de-icing procedures.
The last major fatal air accident in the United States was in 2009, when Continental Flight 3407 from New Jersey to Buffalo, New York, crashed and killed all 49 people aboard.
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