Hamaad Raza, 25, was waiting for his wife at Reagan airport in Washington. The 5342 flight of American Airlines, from Wichita, Kansas, had to land at 21:03, local time, after a route of almost three hours. The cabin was almost … Full.
Twenty minutes before landing, she sent him a message confirming that everything was going during the time. He replied that he was already waiting for her at the terminal. But his latest message was never read.
At 20:43, a Black Hawk helicopter with three soldiers in the infantry body on board, flying south, crashed with the plane. Both aircraft rushed to the Potomac River, whose waters, muds and icy at this time of year, survivors would not recover.
When dozens of journalists arrived at the airport, chaos was absolute. The relatives of the passengers wandered nervous, without certainty on which plane had fallen or if he had managed to merit. Hamaad race He was there, motionless before a window overlooking the river, showing his phone to the cameras. On the screen, the messages that your wife can never answer. When among the media the certainty that the plane was Wichita, race, stunned, called his father and retired, saying: “I beg God to take her out alive.”
Neither she nor the other passengers of the plane, a small bombardier of those used for short journeys, quite common at Reagan airport, which only operates national flights within the United States.
On Sunday, the National Artistic Skating Championship had ended in Wichita, and not a few coaches and athletes stayed in the city in a series of meetings and concentrations.
For some, the return home became a tragedy: Flight 5342 transported a group of skaters, coaches and relatives, true stars in that world. Several of them were going to stop in Washington, on the way to Boston.
Already on Thursday, their families began to arrive, visibly affected, received by the psychological care services in a cordoned part of the airport. The FBI, judicial police, was already in place, starting investigations.
The renowned Russian coaches died in the accident Shishkova and Vadim Naumov evenia, that they were world skating champions in 1994 and key figures in the formation of young promises in the United States. Next to them was their colleague Inna Volyanskaya, soviet excompestive, as well as the Jinna Han and Spencer Lane skaters, two emerging stars of the US skating that traveled with their mothers. The two were just teenagers.
On Wednesday afternoon, Lane, 16, uploaded one last photo to her Instagram account: an image of the plane on the track of the Wichita airport, preparing to take off to Washington. “ICT -> DCA,” he wrote in the publication, referring to the codes of the exit and arrival airports.
A tragedy
Hours before the flight, Lane, by Rhode Island, was exultant in social networks, thanking the opportunity to have participated in a concentration, an objective that had pursued for years. “I learned so many new things that I can apply to my daily life and met incredible people,” he wrote. Among those people were their mentors, the Russians Shishkova and Naumov, with whom he died.
The aircraft broke into three and fell to the Potomac River, where rescue teams have recovered some bodies, but they still look for victims between murky and icy waters. For Lane and the rest of the passengers, which should be a triumphal return became a tragedy.
Many of those skaters were affiliated with Boston’s skating club. Doug Zeghibe, Its director recalled: “Spencer, in the best possible sense, was a crazy boy, with incredible talent.”
“We are devastated by this indescribable tragedy and keep the families of the victims very close in our hearts,” he said.
The airport was closed, taken by police officers and journalists, until it reopened at 11 in the morning. Some people, few, took the first flights, some of them delayed since the previous night.
Almost no one expressed fear. “It is something totally exceptional,” said Venita Johnson, 32, who was flying to Tampa at 11:50. “It is one of those accidents that happens once in a lifetime,” he said quietly, while pushing his cabin suitcase around a hall.
“Have you seen the security here now?” Asked José Campos, 43, who was about to embark on the same flight. “If there is a sure airport today in this country is this,” he added.
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