41 people were killed when an American Airlines plane and an Army helicopter collided in the air over Washington, DC. The aircraft was en route to Reagan Washington National Airport from Wichita, Kan.
According to Pete Hegseth, the Defense Secretary, the helicopter carrying three crew members was going through an annual training exercise to make sure everything was running how it was supposed to be.
The aircraft was involved in the crash; it was flying out of Fort Belvoir located in Virginia. The helicopter crashed in a low-altitude collision with the plane as the plane was approaching the nearby airport runway.
Nearly seconds after the crash, the two aircrafts fell into the Potomac River, which is eight feet deep. Then both the helicopter and the airplane immediately caught on fire.
"We will not be determining the probable cause of the accident while we are here on scene, nor will we speculate about what may have caused this accident," member of the NTSB J. Todd Inman said..
The 67 passengers on the plane, the crew members, and the Army service members were all found dead. On the American Airlines flight, there was a group of young figure skaters, family members, and coaches.
The figure skaters were team members coming from Wichita after competing in the 2025 U.S. Figure Skating Championship. Two of the three crew members on the helicopter were identified as Chief Warrant Officer 2 Andrew Eaves from Brooksville, Miss, and Staff Sgt. Ryan O'Hara from Georgia.
Due to the plane crash, 120 flights were canceled at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. Runway 33 is temporarily closed because of how close the runway is to the crash area and the Potomac River.
Another issue is that the Reagan Washington National Airport was designed to take in about 15 million passengers annually but currently gets about 25 million. This has grown into a conversation between airport officials and elected leaders about whether air traffic safety is impacted by means of this dramatic increase and what they should do to fix these problems.
“The DC plane crash is a really sad story, and I feel bad for the passengers and the accident makes me wonder if future flights are as safe as I thought,” NHS freshman Lyla Bshara said.
The Federal Aviation Administration has issued new regulations for the purpose of helicopters in Washington, D.C. The zone which now currently covers the airspace between certain bridges is currently not in use. In another zone, helicopters are only allowed to fly south of the Woodrow Wilson Bridge to make sure people are passing by safely on a plane.
At this point, concerns around staffing at the Reagan Washington National Airport air traffic control tower the night before the crash could have something to do with the accident.
During the duration before the crash and during the crash, there was one air traffic control worker who was managing a helicopter and some planes coming to the airport. This issue raised concern because managing that hard job is nearly impossible. Usually, it's a two-person job.
"That is one small aspect of the overall investigation," Inman said, adding that having low staffing levels at an airport would not necessarily be an indication of a problem. At times, you’ll have fluctuations of not only flights but also air traffic control," Inman said
, the 48th member of the NTSB who was sworn in March 13 of last year, according to the safety board's website.
The recovery effort has been extensive; the crew forged ahead to try a salvage effort after the plane collision. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers started operations to remove the broken main body of the aircraft and the helicopter in the Potomac River.
The National Transportation Safety Board will allow first responders to complete the work of cleaning up the wreckage in the Potomac River before beginning the investigation into the collision. The reasoning of this crash is still unknown.
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