Fire chief says 28 bodies recovered from crash site including one from the helicopter
WASHINGTON: US officials said on Thursday there were likely no survivors after a passenger jet carrying 64 people collided in midair with a military helicopter and crashed into the icy waters of Washington’s Potomac river.
“We are now at a point where we are switching from a rescue operation to a recovery operation,” Washington Fire Chief John Donnelly told a news conference at Reagan National Airport.”At this point we don’t believe there are any survivors,” Donnelly said, adding that 28 bodies had been recovered — including one from the helicopter.
As dawn broke over the crash site, emergency vessels with powerful arc lights and inflatables with diving teams could be seen moving back and forth over a wide area of the river.Donnelly said 300 first responders had been involved in the operation — most of it conducted in pitch darkness.
“These responders found extremely frigid conditions, they found heavy wind, they found ice on the water, and they operated all night in those conditions,” he said.
There were no details on the cause of the crash, with transport officials saying both aircraft were on standard flight patterns on a clear night with good visibility.
“Do I think this was preventable? Absolutely,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told the news conference.Audio from air traffic controllers showed them repeatedly asking the helicopter if it had the passenger jet “in sight”, and then just before the crash telling it to “pass behind” the plane.
“I just saw a fireball and it was gone,” one air traffic controller was heard telling another after communication with the helicopter was cut.
Both aircraft crashed into the Potomac river and the fuselage of the passenger jet was inverted and broken into three sections.
US Figure Skating said several athletes, coaches and officials were aboard the flight, while officials in Moscow confirmed married Russian couple Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov — who won the 1994 world pairs title — were on the jet.The Bombardier plane operated by an American Airlines subsidiary, with 60 passengers and four crew on board, was approaching Reagan National Airport at around 9:00pm (0200 GMT) after flying from Wichita, Kansas, when the collision happened.
US Army officials said the helicopter involved was a Black Hawk carrying three soldiers on a “training flight”.
Witness Ari Schulman was driving home when he saw what he described as “a stream of sparks” overhead.
