D.C. plane crash: Likely no survivors after plane, helicopter collide
globalnews.caAt least 28 bodies were pulled from the icy waters of the Potomac River after an American Airlines jet carrying 60 passengers and four crew members collided with an Army helicopter while landing at Ronald Reagan National Airport near Washington, officials said Thursday.
Crews were still searching for other casualties but did not believe there were any other survivors, which would make it the deadliest U.S. air crash in nearly 24 years.
“We are now at the point where we are switching from a rescue operation to a recovery operation,” said John Donnelly, the fire chief in the nation’s capital. “We don’t believe there are any survivors.”
The body of the plane was found upside down in three sections in waist-deep water. The wreckage of the helicopter was also found.
There was no immediate word on the cause of the Wednesday collision, but officials said flight conditions were clear as the jet coming from Wichita, Kansas, with U.S. and Russian figure skaters and others aboard, was making a routine landing when the helicopter flew into its path.
“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.”
Three soldiers were onboard the helicopter during a training flight, an Army official said.
Images from the river showed boats around the partly submerged wing and what appeared to be the mangled wreckage of the plane’s fuselage.
“When one person dies it’s a tragedy, but when many, many, many people die it’s an unbearable sorrow,” Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas said.
President Donald Trump said he had been “fully briefed on this terrible accident”
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