A jet with 60 passengers and four crew members aboard collided Wednesday with an Army helicopter while landing at Ronald Reagan National Airport near Washington, prompting a large search-and-rescue operation in the nearby Potomac River.
There was no immediate word on casualties or the cause of the collision, but takeoffs and landings from the airport near Washington were halted as helicopters from law enforcement agencies across the region flew over the scene in search of survivors.
Here's the latest:
AP source: Multiple people killed in midair collision There were multiple fatalities after the midair collision, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press. The person was not authorized to publicly discuss details of the investigation and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.
Authorities are still conducting a search-and-rescue operation in an attempt to find survivors in the water and around the crash site.
-Mike Balsamo
Helicopter was on training flight The US Army said the helicopter that collided with a passenger jet was a UH-60 Blackhawk based at Fort Belvoir in Virginia. A crew of three soldiers were onboard the helicopter, an Army official said. The helicopter was on a training flight.
Military aircraft frequently conduct training flights in and around the congested and heavily-restricted airspace around the nation’s capital for familiarization and continuity of government planning.
‘There was a lot of sadness’ in terminal after passenger jet crash Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz was waiting to catch his flight back to Buffalo, New York, when he saw through the terminal window some emergency vehicles moving out below.
“It didn’t seem anything too strange at that point,” Poloncarz said. “And then about a minute or so after that, there was an announcement of a full-ground stop, that there would be no flights landing and no flights taking off. And then we started to see a lot of emergency vehicles heading towards the river.”
Poloncarz and others soon saw reports on social media of a plane crash, while rumors began to swirl.
“When flights get delayed, people get aggravated and upset. But there was no one getting aggravated or upset because I think we all realized pretty quickly the magnitude of what occurred. The terminal grew pretty quiet. There was a lot of sadness.”
Last fatal US commercial airline crash was in 2009 The last fatal crash involving a US commercial airline occurred in 2009 in New York, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.
Everyone aboard the Bombardier DHC-8 propeller plane was killed, including 45 passengers, 2 pilots and 2 flight attendants. Another person on the ground also died, bringing the total death toll to 50. An investigation determined that the captain accidentally caused the plane to stall as it approached the airport in Buffalo.
Audio shows no response from helicopter after air traffic control warning Less than 30 seconds before the crash, an air traffic controller asks the helicopter if it has the arriving plane in sight: “PAT25, do you have the CRJ in sight?”
The controller makes another radio call to PAT25 moments later: “PAT 25 pass behind the CRJ.”
The two aircraft collide seconds later.
The audio from flight tracking sites doesn’t record any response from the helicopter, if any, to the warnings from air traffic control.
The plane’s radio transponder stopped transmitting about 2,400 feet (730 meters) short of the runway, roughly over the middle of the river.
