There were likely no survivors during a midair collision between a passenger jet and a helicopter over the Potomac River near Washington, the district’s fire chief said in a news conference on Thursday.
“We are now at a point where we’re switching from a rescue operation to a recovery operation. At this point, we don’t believe there are any survivors from this accident,” DC Fire and Emergency Medical Services Chief John Donnelly said at the morning press conference.
“At this point, we don’t believe there are any survivors from this accident.”
Officials have recovered 27 bodies from the plane and one from the helicopter, he said. The local medical examiner is now working to reunite the bodies with their family members and loved ones as search and rescue efforts continue.
American Airlines Flight 5342, operated by PSA Airlines, had 60 passengers and four crew members aboard when it crashed at around 9 p.m. ET with a U.S. Army helicopter as it was landing at Reagan National Airport in Crystal City, Virginia, about 5 miles from Washington. The jet was traveling from Wichita, Kansas, to Reagan National Airport on Wednesday, officials have said.
A few minutes before the jet was to land, air traffic controllers asked American Airlines Flight 5342 if it could land on a shorter runway, and the pilots agreed. Controllers cleared the jet to land, and flight tracking sites showed that the plane had adjusted its approach to the new runway.
The helicopter was a UH-60 Blackhawk based at Fort Belvoir in Virginia, according to the U.S. Army. A crew of three soldiers were on board the helicopter, the Army has said.
The other aircraft was a Canadian-made Bombardier CRJ-701 twin-engine jet and was manufactured in 2004. It can be configured to carry up to 70 passengers.
Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy, who spoke at the press conference, said the plane and helicopter were in a “standard flight pattern” before the collision, adding that “this was a clear night last night.”
“The American Airlines flight coming in to land was in a standard flight pattern as it was coming into DCA, so this was not unusual with a military aircraft flying the river and aircraft landing at DCA,” the secretary said, using the DCA acronym for Reagan National Airport.
“We are going to wait for all the information to come in from this vantage point, but to back up what the president said, what I’ve seen so far, do I think this was preventable? Absolutely,” Duffy said.
In the news conference, Duffy also said that the American Airline plane’s fuselage was found “inverted” in “three different sections” in approximately “waist-deep water.” Recovery efforts for the fuselage are ongoing before the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) begins its analysis process, he said.
“As that recovery takes place of the fuselage of the aircraft, NTSB is going to start to analyze that aircraft, partner with the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] with all the information we have to get the best results possible for the American people,” he said.
The NTSB will become the lead agency in investigating the crash moving forward, Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser said at the conference. She said she expects the agency to brief her on its findings later on Thursday.
American Airlines CEO Robert Isom said the airline was coordinating with local, state, and federal authorities and “cooperating fully” with the NTSB investigation.
“Anything we can do, we are doing,” Isom said, noting that the company was sending a team to Washington and that he would also be traveling there.
Fatal crashes of commercial aircraft in the United States are a rarity. The last was in 2009 near Buffalo, New York. All 45 passengers and the four crew members were killed when the Bombardier DHC-8 propeller plane crashed into a house. One person on the ground was also killed.
At one point, Duffy was asked whether travelers should feel safe heading to the Washington area following the incident.
“Can I guarantee the American flying public that the U.S. has the most safe and secure airspace in the world? And the answer to that is absolutely yes, we do,” he said.
“We have early indicators of what happened here, and I will tell you with complete confidence [that] we have the safest airspace in the world.”
