Figure skaters, pipefitters and foreign nationals were among the more than 60 people killed when an American Airlines regional jet collided midair with an Army helicopter near the nation’s capital on Wednesday, marking the country’s deadliest aviation accident in more than two decades.
President Trump said Americans are suffering during an “hour of anguish” as first responders pivoted from a rescue to a recovery mission in their search for the aircraft wreckage scattered around the Potomac River.
“Sadly, there are no survivors,” Mr. Trump said Thursday about the plane making its approach to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. He called the tragedy a “dark and excruciating night in our nation’s capital and in our nation’s history.”
The president also laid blame for the crash on Democrats and their commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives that he said put underqualified people in crucial safety jobs.
Mr. Trump specifically blamed former Presidents Obama and Biden for lowering hiring standards to “very mediocre at best” before the current administration elevated them back to “extraordinary.”
“I put safety first,” the president said. “Obama, Biden and the Democrats put policy first, and they put politics at a level that nobody’s ever seen because this was the lowest level.”
American Airlines confirmed 64 people — 60 passengers and four crew members — were aboard the jet arriving from Wichita, Kansas, toward the airport. U.S. Army officials said a three-man crew was on the Black Hawk helicopter flying out of Fort Belvoir in Virginia.
D.C. Fire and EMS Chief John Donnelly said the city’s Office of the Medical Examiner has the lead on reuniting the victims’ remains with their loved ones. As of Thursday morning, 28 bodies had been pulled from the crash site.
“We will continue to work to find all bodies and collect them and reunite them with their loved ones,” Mr. Donnelly said at a briefing.
The chief said recovery teams are scouring a debris field that stretches from the crash zone near the airport down to the Woodrow Wilson Bridge connecting Alexandria, Virginia, with Oxon Hill, Maryland.
The collision is the deadliest domestic airplane accident since 2001, when American Airlines Flight 587 crashed into a neighborhood in Queens, New York, and killed 265 people.
Airport officials said Reagan National Airport reopened at 11 a.m.
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Mr. Trump said many Americans and some Russian citizens were aboard the doomed flight when it went down into the Potomac River shortly before 9 p.m. Wednesday.
A full list of who perished in the crash would be released Thursday afternoon, the president said, but individual organizations have already started disclosing information about passengers they knew on the flight.
The Skating Club of Boston said 14 members of U.S. Figure Skating died in the collision, including a married pair of championship skaters-turned-coaches and two young skaters and two of their parents who belonged to the club.
“Skating is a very close and tight-knit community. These kids and their parents — they are here at our skating facility in Norwood [Massachusetts] six, sometimes seven days a week. It is a close, tight bond, and I think for all of us, we have lost family,” Doug Zeghibe, the club CEO, told Boston’s WCVB-TV.
Mr. Zeghibe said coaches Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, who won a title together at the 1994 World Championships and competed at the Winter Olympics twice, died in the crash.
Skater Spencer Lane, 16, and his mother, Christine Lane, as well as skater Jinna Han, 13, and her mother, Jin Han, also died in the catastrophe, the executive said.
U.S. Figure Skating said the flight was returning from a development camp in Wichita.
“We are devastated by this unspeakable tragedy and hold the victims’ families closely in our heart,” U.S. Figure Skating officials said.
A steamfitters union based in the D.C. area said four of its members perished in the crash as well.
“We are heartbroken to confirm that four members of UA Steamfitters Local 602 were among the victims of the American Airlines Flight 5342 crash yesterday,” the United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipefitting Industry of the United States and Canada said on X.
The union said it’s planning a relief effort for the victims’ loved ones.
Lawmakers from Kansas shared their grief about the disaster during an overnight press briefing at Reagan National.
“When one person dies, it’s a tragedy, but when many, many, many people die, it’s an unbearable sorrow,” Sen. Roger Marshall, Kansas Republican, said.
Rescue divers battled frigid waters and high winds through the night as they probed the murky Potomac River for any signs of victims.
Roughly 300 first responders from the U.S. Coast Guard and municipal agencies in D.C., Maryland and Virginia rushed to the scene after the crash was reported.
During the White House briefing Thursday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth suggested human error was behind the catastrophe.
“The military does dangerous things. It does routine things on a regular basis. Tragically, last night, a mistake was made,” he said. “There was some … sort of an elevation issue that we have immediately begun investigating at the DOD and Army level.”
His statement echoed a sentiment shared by Mr. Trump and newly sworn-in Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who both said the accident was preventable.
Mr. Trump linked the previous administration’s DEI initiatives to ditching tests that screened for the most qualified candidates.
He said it was “common sense” to connect the deadly collision with Democratic policies, despite the investigation still being in its infancy.
The Federal Aviation Administration confirmed the collision involved a PSA Airlines Bombardier CRJ700 regional airliner and a Sikorsky H-60 helicopter as the jet approached Reagan National Airport.
Audio from air traffic controllers can be heard asking the arriving passenger jet if it could land on Reagan National’s shorter Runway 33. The pilots confirmed they were able to, and controllers cleared the plane for landing.
An air traffic controller asked the Black Hawk helicopter if it had the arriving plane in sight less than 30 seconds before the crash.
The controller made another radio call to the helicopter moments later: “PAT 25 pass behind the CRJ.” The two aircraft collided seconds later.
The plane’s radio transponder stopped transmitting about 2,400 feet short of the runway, roughly over the middle of the river.
The tower immediately began diverting other aircraft from Reagan National.
The FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board are leading the investigation into the crash.
• Mallory Wilson and Jeff Mordock contributed to this report.
• Matt Delaney can be reached at mdelaney@washingtontimes.com.
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