Midair collision leaves 67 dead; worst US crash in two decades

WASHINGTON — On a clear night at Reagan National Airport, an air traffic controller radioed a warning to an Army Black Hawk helicopter traveling south along the Potomac River.

“PAT25,” the controller said, using the call sign for the Black Hawk, “do you have the CRJ in sight?”

CRJ, shorthand for a type of passenger jet, was American Airlines Flight 5342. The plane was arriving after a 2-1/2-hour journey from Wichita, Kansas, and carrying 64 people. Among them men returning from a duck hunting trip and a group of figure skaters, including several teenagers, some of their parents, and two former world champions from Russia.

The tower told the helicopter to “pass behind” the plane, and the response from the Army pilot came quickly. “The aircraft’s in sight,” the pilot said, and he requested permission for “visual separation” — meaning to maneuver away from the plane.

But moments later gasps were heard coming from the control tower. “Oooh!” someone exclaimed, according to a recording posted to LiveATC.net, a site that compiles control tower communication.

In the skies above Washington, just 3 miles from the White House, a fireball illuminated the night.

The collision of the Black Hawk and Flight 5342, which killed everyone on the jet and all three people in the helicopter, was the deadliest crash in the United States in more than 20 years. Why it occurred was still unknown on Thursday, but a preliminary Federal Aviation Administration report noted that the air traffic control tower, monitoring one of the country’s most congested air corridors, was understaffed at the time.

Recovery crews searching in the icy Potomac had pulled at least 27 bodies from the plane and one from the helicopter, officials said.

Even though accident investigators had barely collected any information, President Donald Trump quickly began assigning fault.

In a news conference, he blamed the helicopter pilots and his political adversaries. And in comments that most likely pleased many of his supporters and offended many other Americans, he blamed diversity.

Trump said warnings issued to the helicopter should have come earlier, but also that “the people in the helicopter should have seen where they were going.” Referring to the airplane’s path, he added: “What was a helicopter doing in that track?”

Trump, who has made the dismantling of diversity programs a key goal of his administration, also blamed diversity efforts at the FAA and his two Democratic predecessors, saying that standards for air traffic controllers had been too lax.

“For some jobs, we need the highest level of genius,” he said.

Of the FAA under former President Barack Obama, Trump said: “They actually came out with a directive, too white.”

When asked how he could say that diversity hiring was to blame for the crash even though basic facts were still being sought by investigators, he said, “Because I have common sense.”

The Congressional Black Caucus, in a statement, said that an opportunity to mourn those killed in the plane crash was “marred by a truly disgusting and disgraceful display of racist political prognostication.” Pete Buttigieg, who was transportation secretary in the Biden administration, wrote “Despicable” on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter.

The accident was the deadliest in the United States since Nov. 12, 2001, when an American Airlines flight to the Dominican Republic crashed shortly after takeoff from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, killing all 260 people on board and five on the ground.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Thursday that the Army Black Hawk involved in the collision Wednesday was “doing a required annual night evaluation” flight and was being flown by “a fairly experienced crew.” Robert Isom, the CEO of American Airlines, said that the pilot of the jet had almost six years’ experience.

Mike Sagely, a former Army Special Operations helicopter pilot who has flown similar Black Hawk helicopters above the Potomac River more than a dozen times, described the collision as baffling, given the large number of safeguards that are typically in effect.

“It really blows my mind that they actually hit,” he said.

Sagely said the crash signaled that “multiple failures” of safety systems must have occurred.

The crash comes after repeated warnings from experts that the country’s air traffic control system is overburdened.

Staffing at the air traffic control tower was “not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic,” according to an internal preliminary FAA safety report about the collision that was reviewed by The New York Times. The controller who was handling helicopters in the airport’s vicinity was also instructing planes that were landing and departing from its runways. Those jobs typically are assigned to two controllers, rather than one.

A review of FAA data shows Reagan Airport has had more close calls in the past five years than any of the nearby airports. The data shows that since 2019 there have been about 70 near collisions involving aircraft. In comparison, about 40 such incidents happened at Baltimore and Dulles airports during the same time frame combined.

Sagely said a key question was what type of collision avoidance system was installed in the Black Hawk helicopter. Since 2020, the FAA has required aircraft operating in busier parts of United States airspace to broadcast their locations using a system known as Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast or ADS-B.

A rule posted in 2019 allowed some military aircraft that were flying sensitive missions to operate with the system turned off, to avoid revealing their movements.

If the Black Hawk was equipped with an additional safeguard known as Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System, or TCAS, the system would have squawked at the pilots, Sagely said.

Hegseth noted that the helicopter pilots had night-vision goggles. Sagely, who has flown nearly 3,000 hours using night-vision equipment and now flies firefighting helicopters for the Los Angeles County Fire Department, said pilots decide whether to use the goggles, which flip up and down from their helmets, depending on their surroundings.

If the pilots in the Black Hawk were using them, the brightness of the many lights in the area might have obscured the passenger plane from their view, Sagely said.

“The goggles are designed to work with almost no light,” he said. “If the airplane is below the horizon line, which it probably was, it’s blended in with all of the lights.”

Many passengers on the jet were athletes and coaches leaving Wichita, after a skating program held there after the national championships.

Two were world-class ice skaters who were married and worked as coaches in the United States. The skaters, Yevgeniya Shishkova, 52, and Vadim Naumov, 55, competed for Russia in pairs figure skating before moving to the United States in 1998.

Three young figure skaters and six parents from Fairfax County, Virginia, were killed, the schools superintendent said. Two Boston-area skaters also died on the plane, Spencer Lane, 16, of Barrington, Rhode Island, and Jinna Han, 13, of Mansfield, Massachusetts, and their mothers, Christine Lane and Jin Han.

Elin Schran, a skater and choreographer, said that Spencer had skated in his first professional show in December, and that he had been nervous. He performed well and was lit up afterward with his success, she said.

“He had such natural grace and beauty, his positions were so gorgeous and he was beaming,” she recalled, fighting back tears. “He told me, ‘I get it now’ — he had started to understand the connection with the audience — and he said, ‘Please let me skate with you next year.’”

Also on the plane was Michael Stovall, who was returning from what a cousin, Shawna Slarb, described as “a boys’ trip” hunting ducks. Stovall had spent days in Kansas with friends, bundled up against the Midwestern chill and happily traipsing through the woods.

Stovall, a Maryland resident who was known as Mikey, was flying with at least six friends, Slarb said. Some of the men had known one another since childhood.

Stovall, 40, was a steamfitter — a job involving industrial pipe installation — by trade, a Baltimore Orioles fan, and an avid hunter and skier. His Facebook page was full of photos from his adventures with his wife, son and friends.

Another member of the hunting group on the plane, Jesse Pitcher, 30, owned a plumbing business and had been married just over a year, said his father, Jameson Pitcher. Jesse Pitcher and his wife, Kylie, were building a new house.

“He was just getting started with life,” the elder Pitcher said. “He said he’d see me when he got back.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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