An American Airlines aircraft with 60 passengers and four crew members has crashed after colliding in full flight with a Black Hawk helicopter from the US army while landing at Ronald Reagan National Airport, near Washington DC. As a consequence of the accident, an extensive search and rescue operation has been activated in the Potomac River.
According to the Washington Post, several bodies have been taken out of the water. The NBC informs, in turn, that four people had been rescued alive from the Potomac.
All airport takeoffs and landings, the closest to the capital, were interrupted while helicopters of the security forces throughout the region flew over the place in search of survivors.
Three soldiers were aboard the helicopter, said an American government source.
The president of the United States, Donald Trump, said he had been “fully informed about this terrible accident” and, referring to passengers, added: “May God bless his souls.”
The Federal Aviation Administration has reported that the accident in full flight occurred around 9 p.m. airport landing floor.
The accident occurred in one of the most closely controlled and monitored air spaces, just over five kilometers south of the White House and Capitol.
Researchers will try to rebuild the last moments of the aircraft before the collision, including contact with air controllers and the altitude loss of the passenger plane.
American Airlines Flight 5342 was heading to the Reagan National Airport at an altitude of about 400 feet and a speed of about 140 miles per hour when it suffered a rapid loss of altitude over the Potomac River, according to the data of its radio transponder.
The Bimotor Bombardier CRJ-701, of Canadian manufacture, was manufactured in 2004 and can be configured to transport up to 70 passengers.
A few minutes before the landing, the controllers asked the commercial plane if they could land on track 33, the shortest, of the Reagan National, and the pilots replied yes. The controllers authorized the plane to land on track 33.
Less than 30 seconds before the accident, an aerial controller asks the helicopter if the plane that arrives is in sight. The controller makes another radio call to the helicopter moments later: “Pat 25 passes behind the CRJ.” Seconds later, the two aircraft collide.
The plane’s radio transpondor stopped transmitting about 2,400 feet of the track, more or less in the middle of the river.
The tower immediately began to divert other Reagan airplanes.
The video of an observation camera of the nearby Kennedy Center showed two sets of lights consisting of airplanes that seemed to join in a fireball.
The accident is serving as an important evidence for two of the new members of the Trump administration. Pete Hegseth, appointed days ago as Secretary of Defense, published on social networks that his department was “actively supervising” the situation in which he has been involved to an army helicopter.
For his part, the Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy, who has just swept his position earlier this week, said in a message on social networks that he was “closely following the situation.”
Reagan National Airport is located on the banks of the Potomac River, just southwest of the city. It is a popular aerodrome because it is much closer than the Dulles International Airport, larger and in Virginia.
The incident reminds the accident of an Air Florida plane that rushed to Potomac on January 13, 1982, killing 78 people. That event was attributed to bad weather.
The last deadly accident of an American commercial airline occurred in 2009 near Buffalo (New York). All the people who were aboard the Bombardier DHC-8 propeller plane, including 45 passengers, two pilots and two flight assistants. Another person also died on land, so that the total number of fatalities amounted to 50.
The subsequent investigation determined that the captain accidentally caused the plane to enter loss when it approached the buffalo airport.
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