Everyone presumed dead in plane-helicopter collision over Washington

Washington, Jan 31, (dpa/GNA) – All 64 people on board an American Airlines passenger jet and all three soldiers on board an army helicopter that collided over Washington, are presumed dead, officials said on Thursday, after an overnight search operation in the icy Potomac River.

“At this point, we don’t believe there are any survivors from this accident,” Washington fire chief John Donnelly said at a morning press conference.

He said the bodies of 27 people on the plane and one from the helicopter, have been recovered from the river that passes by the US capital.

“We are now at a point where we are switching from a rescue operation to a recovery operation,” he said.

American Airlines Flight 5342 was travelling from Wichita, Kansas to Washington’s Reagan National Airport, when it collided with the Black Hawk military helicopter, as it was approaching the runway shortly before 9 pm on Wednesday (0200 GMT Thursday), sending both aircraft plummeting into the river.

Some 300 emergency responders deployed to locate survivors were racing against time, as they searched the dark and icy waters overnight.

The Pentagon said the Black Hawk army helicopter had been on a training flight when colliding with the plane.

American Airlines chief Robert Isom said the cause of the accident was still unclear.

US President Donald Trump suggested that failures on part of the helicopter’s pilot might have caused the mid-air collision.

“You had a pilot problem, from the standpoint of the helicopter,” Trump said during a news briefing at the White House on Thursday, claiming that the army helicopter could have changed its course to avoid colliding with the American Airlines plane.

The US president also criticized air traffic control at Reagan Washington National Airport, for taking too long to send out a warning.

Trump also blamed diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for the crash.

He claimed the DEI programmes at the FAA included “focus on hiring people with severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities,” again without citing any evidence.

Fourteen figure skaters were among those killed in the collision according to initial findings, the chief executive of the Skating Club of Boston, Doug Zeghibe, said during a press conference on Thursday.

Six of the victims were from the Boston club, including “two coaches, two teenage athletes and the athletes’ mothers,” he said.

The US Figure Skating federation had previously said that a group of figure skaters and coaches were on board the plane, according to a statement quoted by local media.

Russian state news agency TASS had previously reported that 1994 world champions Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov were among the victims. The duo had most recently been working as coaches at the Boston Club and Zeghibe confirmed that they had been killed in the accident.

Zeghibe, visibly moved, called the incident a “pretty horrific tragedy.”

He said the skaters, the athletes, coaches and family members were returning home from a national development camp for top young figure skaters held in conjunction with the US figure skating championships in Wichita, Kansas.

Shishkova and Naumov became world champions in pairs in 1994. The couple had been working as coaches for the Boston club since 2017. Their son, Maxim Naumov, also competed in the US championships in Wichita, but he was not on the flight, Zeghibe said.

GNA