Topics: Military, US News, News, Travel, Washington, American Airlines
67 people are feared to have died after a mid-air collision between a passenger plane and military helicopter occured last night.
The tragic ordeal happened in Washington D.C at around 9pm local time, and saw an American Airlines aircraft and a US Army Black Hawk helicopter crash into each other.
There were 64 passengers and crew members on the commercial craft, and three soldiers on the helicopter. It's been reported that so far, 19 bodies have been recovered from the Potomac River.
The collision marks the US's first first major commercial airline crash since 2009, says ABC News.
Advert
The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating the matter and have said that preliminary information suggests that the two aircrafts collided while both approaching Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
DC Fire and EMS Chief John Donnelly confirmed that around 300 emergency personnel were on hand at the scene last night.
Donnelly has also revealed that divers are facing some difficulties in recovering the bodies from the river.
"The water that we’re operating in is about 8ft deep," he said. "There is wind, there is pieces of ice out there. So it’s just dangerous and hard to work in."
President Trump has also spoken out on the fatal incident and described it as 'not good'.
He penned on TruthSocial: "This is a bad situation that looks like it should have been prevented. NOT GOOD!!!"
People have described seeing 'white flares' in the sky when the two aircrafts crashed into each other.
Jimmy Mazeo was eating dinner with his girlfriend in a park near to the airport when tragedy struck.
Speaking about seeing the 'flares' in the sky, Mazeo said: "We noticed the planes started having irregular patterns [...] and then we looked up in the sky and saw these white flares."
He continued to tell WUSA9: "We didn't really think much of it until we saw the fire trucks started going out to the tarmac, and the police cars, and police boats. It was insane."
Another witness, Ari Schulman, told NBC News: "It looked to me like a giant Roman candle, sparks shooting from the head of the plane down to the tail. I saw that for about two seconds."
While three soldiers were on the helicopter, Army officials have since confirmed that no senior military leaders were onboard.
Meanwhile, the commercial aircraft was carrying 'several members of our skating community', US Figure Skating said.
Two of these people have been confirmed to be former world champion Russian figure skaters Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, official spokesperson for the Kremlin, Dmitry Peskov, revealed.
Peskov added, as per The Guardian: "There were other fellow citizens of ours there too. Bad news from Washington today."
