WASHINGTON — A jet with 60 passengers and four crew members collided with an Army helicopter while approaching Ronald Reagan National Airport near Washington, D.C., sending the two aircraft plummeting into the Potomac River. Everyone on board the two aircraft is feared dead, officials said Thursday.
The collision occurred Wednesday night in some of the world's most tightly controlled airspace, just over 3 miles (5 kilometers) south of the White House and the U.S. Capitol.
Here are some things to know about the collision:
The crash
The collision happened at around 9 p.m. when a regional jet at the end of a flight from Wichita, Kansas, collided with a military helicopter on a training exercise, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
A few minutes before the jet was to land, air traffic controllers asked American Airlines Flight 5342 if it could do so on a shorter runway, and the pilots agreed. Controllers cleared the jet to land and flight tracking sites showed the plane adjust its approach to the new runway.
Less than 30 seconds before the collision, an air traffic controller asked a helicopter if it had the arriving plane in sight. The controller made another radio call to the helicopter moments later, saying “PAT 25 pass behind the CRJ" — apparently telling the copter to wait for the Bombardier CRJ-701 twin-engine jet to pass. There was no reply. Seconds after that, the aircraft collided.
The plane’s radio transponder stopped transmitting about 2,400 feet (732 meters) short of the runway, roughly over the middle of the Potomac.
The body of the plane was found upside-down in three sections in waist-deep water, officials said. The helicopter's wreckage was also found.
The emergency response
Authorities conducted a massive search-and-rescue operation that has turned into a recovery mission.
Roughly 300 first responders were at the scene early Thursday, with inflatable boats combing the river and mobile light towers along the shore illuminating the area. Law enforcement helicopters from throughout the region were taking part in the search for bodies, and Coast Guard boats later joined the effort.
“We are now at the point where we are switching from a rescue operation to a recovery operation,” Washington fire chief John Donnelly said at a Thursday morning news conference. “We don’t believe there are any survivors.”
The investigation and questions
Federal investigators will try to piece together the moments before the collision, including any communication between the aircraft and air traffic controllers and a loss of altitude by the jet.
President Donald Trump, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Secretary of the Army nominee Daniel Driscoll all said it appeared to them that the crash could have been avoided.
“I think we might need to look at where is an appropriate time to take a training risk, and it may not be near an airport like Reagan," Driscoll said at his Senate confirmation hearing.
Trump took the opportunity to criticize diversity hiring efforts at the FAA, though when pressed about why, he acknowledged that there is no evidence yet that it could be blamed for the collision.
“It just could have been,” he said.
The victims
If everyone on the plane did die, it would be the deadliest U.S. air crash in nearly 24 years. At least 28 bodies had been pulled from the river’s icy waters as of mid-morning.
Among the passengers were several members of the Skating Club of Boston who were returning from the 2025 U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Wichita. They included teenage figure skaters Jinna Han and Spencer Lane, the teens' mothers and two highly regarded Russian-born figure skating coaches, Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov.
Shishkova and Naumov, who were married and had lived in the U.S. for many years, won a 1994 world championship in pairs figure skating. Among their students was their 23-year-old son, Maxim Naumov, a former U.S. junior champion who narrowly missed the podium Sunday while his parents watched.
Other Russians were also on the jet, according to the Kremlin.
The three soldiers aboard the helicopter were doing an annual night proficiency training flight, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said, adding they were a “fairly experienced crew.” Their names had not been released as officials were notifying relatives, he said.
The airport
Located along the Potomac just southwest of Washington, Reagan National is a popular choice because it’s much closer to the city than the larger Dulles International Airport.
All takeoffs and landings from Reagan were halted. It was set to reopen at 11 a.m. Thursday, the FAA said.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said at a news conference that the night was clear and that prior to the collision, the plane and helicopter flight paths “were not unusual for what happens in the D.C. airspace."
“I would just say that everyone who flies in American skies expects that we fly safely," he said. "That when you depart an airport, you get to your destination. That didn’t happen last night, and I know that President Trump, his administration, the FAA, the DOT, we will not rest until we have answers for the families and for the flying public.”
The crash happened as federal authorities and aviation experts have expressed concerns about increasing close calls between planes.
The aircraft
The helicopter was a UH-60 Blackhawk based at Fort Belvoir in Virginia, according to the U.S. Army.
The plane was a Canadian-made Bombardier CRJ-701 twin-engine jet and was manufactured in 2004. It can carry up to 70 passengers.
History of fatal aircraft crashes
Fatal crashes of commercial aircraft in the U.S. are rare. 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.
The incident Wednesday recalled the crash of an Air Florida flight that plummeted into the Potomac on January 13, 1982, killing 78 people. That crash was attributed to bad weather.
