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Despite challenging conditions for divers and recovery teams in the Potomac River, DC Fire and EMS Chief John Donnelly said he is confident “we will recover the remains of everyone” involved in the collision.
The fire chief said divers have been working for about 20 hours, carrying out efforts in different areas around the crash site. Wind, ice and jet fuel on the water are just some of the factors making the job difficult, he told CNN on Thursday.
Additionally, many areas of the Potomac where crews are working are not very deep.
“That’s actually part of the challenge is that you’re half swimming, half walking while you’re working. This is very strenuous for our divers or rescue swimmers that are in the water,” Donnelly said, referring to the silt at the bottom.
Wreckage from the collided passenger plane and helicopter also could rip divers’ suits, another hazard, he said. Officials are in the process of mapping the debris field, according to Donnelly.
“It’s important that we not only get the victims out, but we preserve the evidence so we can find out what caused this crash and hopefully work to prevent it in the future,” he said.
The fire chief said about 300 responders from 21 different agencies responded to the collision on Wednesday night. “That doesn’t happen in many places,” he said.
Authorities said earlier today that there are believed to be no survivors. The aircraft, flying from Wichita, Kansas, was carrying 64 people, while three soldiers were aboard the helicopter.
“This is a tragedy,” Donnelly said. “We are in a business where we deal with the loss of life or people being hurt and one person is bad, and it’s hard — and 67 is a lot.”
There was one air traffic controller working two different tower positions at the time of the collision Wednesday night, an air traffic control source tells CNN.
The source describes the set-up, which had one person handling both local and helicopter traffic, as not uncommon.
The New York Times, which first reported the detail, says an internal, preliminary Federal Aviation Administration internal report says staffing was “not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic.”
The Reagan National control tower is 85 percent staffed, the source said, with 24 of 28 positions filled.
The National Transportation Safety Board is just beginning its investigation and will look at a wide range of potential causes of the collision. It is too early to tell whether the tower staffing at the time played a role in the incident.
CNN has reached out to the FAA for comment.
There are so far no indications that emergency evacuation slides were deployed on the commercial plane after its crash into the Potomac River on Wednesday night, National Transportation Safety Board member Todd Inman said.
“Right now, we’re going through the debris fields. Nothing we’ve seen would indicate that maybe slides or shoots were deployed,” he said. “It was a very quick, rapid impact.”
He cautioned that the NTSB still needs to verify that information.
The National Transportation Safety Board received a “very large package of information” from the Federal Aviation Administration early this morning.
At approximately 3 a.m. Thursday, the Federal Aviation Administration gave the NTSB the information, NTSB member J. Todd Inman said at a media briefing Thursday. The briefing was the first from the NTSB following the crash of a commercial jet and a helicopter in Washington, DC, which killed everyone on board.
“We received a very large package of information from the FAA at about 3 a.m. I believe, this morning, that is still being reviewed and analyzed,” Inman said. “I would say there’s a lot more information that usually comes in than that what you may find online, and people might speculate about, and that is part of that overall process where we take the time to get the information correct and to make sure all the parties are engaged, involved, and can fact check that information.”
The National Transportation Safety Board investigation will look at the “human, machine and the environment” to determine the cause of the deadly collision, the agency said Tuesday.
“We will look at all the humans that were involved in this accident,” NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said at a news conference. “We will look at the aircraft, we will look at the helicopter and we will look at the environment in which they were operating in.”
NTSB member Todd Inman said if investigators “find something that is a significant issue that warrants immediate attention, we will not hesitate to make those recommendations and make them public.”
US Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said the Coast Guard witnessed the midair collision as it occurred Wednesday and swiftly took action to assist.
“Our cutter,” Noem said, referring to a type of Coast Guard vessel, “was the first to arrive on the scene,” she shared in a post on X Thursday.
The secretary also included photos of herself with Coast Guard personnel.
American Airlines CEO Robert Isom has met with the families of victims of Flight 5342, Isom told CNN as he was departing Reagan National Airport’s departures lobby.
Isom, accompanied by security and press staff and dressed casually in a blue quarter-zip sweater, nodded solemnly when asked by CNN if he had met with victims’ families and planned to meet with investigators.
CNN was prevented from asking additional questions before the team departed the airport’s upper level atrium.
As victims’ families arrive in Washington D.C. to remember their loved ones, American Airlines agents working at the ticketing desk were seen bringing bouquets of flowers through security.
The head of the National Transportation Safety Board made a plea for people to give the agency time to verify the facts as it works to investigate what caused the collision between a passenger plane and a helicopter on Wednesday.
“It’s not that we don’t have information. We do have information, we have data. We have substantial amounts of information — we need to verify information. We need to take our time to make sure it is accurate,” NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said Thursday.
She said this level of verification is important for all parties involved, including families of the victims.
“We do have a lot of information, but we need some time to verify that,” Homendy reiterated.
Some context: Despite the investigation being in its earliest stages, President Donald Trump wasted no time Thursday baselessly blaming Democrats and diversity initiatives in the federal government for the midair collision that killed 67 people over the Potomac River.
“I have common sense, OK?” Trump said, when pressed what evidence he had to give credence to the blame he piled on the Biden and Obama administrations. “Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t.”
He also appeared to place blame for the midair collision on “very late” warnings from air traffic control and the soldiers flying the US Army Black Hawk helicopter, who, he said, “should have seen where they were going.”
Homendy, who was originally nominated to the board by Trump and later nominated as chair by former President Joe Biden, at one point responded to questions about the speculation by turning it around on the media, saying “the press also likes to state what probable cause is before we get to the probable cause.”
This post has been updated with context about Trump’s claims today and more from Homendy’s comments.
National Transportation Safety Board member Todd Inman said the agency will be briefing the families of victims of Flight 5342 later today.
“We normally try to do this before media events, but in this case, they’re still arriving,” he said at a news conference Thursday. “Our family assistance specialists are already working closely with local officials and others to help assist them in their efforts to support everyone that’s affected by this accident.”
Many of those families are en route to the scene, while others are being notified, Inman said. A family assistance facility is being set up by American and PSA airlines in Bethesda, Maryland, he said.
Loss of life in an aviation accident is “very unusual in the United States,” Inman said. The agency will find out what happened through multiple working groups, he added. “We will do it factually and we will do it accurately,” Inman said.
“Our heart-filled sorrow goes out to everyone that’s affected,” Inman said in an emotional tone. “It affects us, affects everyone around us. There are a lot of people hurting today.”
If the families wish to visit the collision site, NTSB can arrange it once it’s safe and perishable evidence has been collected, Inman said. “It will take some time,” he said.
National Transportation Safety Board member Todd Inman said the agency’s goal is to issue a preliminary report on the cause of the plane-helicopter collision within 30 days.
“Our investigative team will be on scene as long as it takes in order to obtain all of the perishable evidence and all of the fact-finding that is needed to bring us to a conclusion of probable cause,” he said.
“Our mission is to understand not just what happened but why it happened and to recommend changes to prevent it from happening again.”
The final report will be issued “once we’ve completed all of our fact-finding and investigation,” Inman added.
The National Transportation Safety Board will allow first responders do their jobs first, before it starts its investigation into the deadly collision, the board’s chair said on Thursday.
NTSB Chair Jennifer L. Homendy called it an “all hands on deck event.”
She said this is the first day the NTSB has had a full crew on the scene, with about 50 people at the site of the crash as well as other personnel ready to assist at the agency’s headquarters and labs around the country.
But first, “we allow the responders to do their important safety mission, which in this case was search and rescue and recovery,” she said. “We stand back to allow them to do their important safety mission.”
Homendy emphasized that the NTSB will “leave no stone unturned in this investigation” and that it would be a “whole of government effort.” The agency’s chair added that she briefed President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance earlier today.
“We are going to conduct a thorough investigation of this entire tragedy, looking at the facts,” she said.
Homendy said the agency would provide more information as it is uncovered.
This post has been updated with more comments from Homendy.
The National Transportation Safety Board is giving an update on the investigation and recovery efforts after a deadly collision between a passenger plane and Army helicopter near Washington, DC.
The news conference is being held at Reagan Washington National Airport, the agency said in a social media post.
NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy and the investigator in charge are expected to speak.
The deaths of several members of the US figure skating community evoked grim memories of the 1961 plane crash that killed all 18 members of the US figure skating team headed to the world figure skating championships in Prague, Czechoslovakia.
A married pair of skating champions, two young skaters and their mothers were among those killed in the plane crash Wednesday night, the Skating Club of Boston said Thursday. Young athletes were also on board, returning from a developmental camp following the US championships in Wichita, US Figure Skating said. The organization has not confirmed the total number of skaters killed.
“U.S. Figure Skating can confirm that several members of our skating community were sadly aboard American Airlines Flight 5342, which collided with a helicopter yesterday evening in Washington, D.C.,” read a statement from the organization, America’s governing body for figure skating. “These athletes, coaches, and family members were returning home from the National Development Camp held in conjunction with the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Wichita, Kansas. We are devastated by this unspeakable tragedy and hold the victims’ families closely in our hearts.”
More than 60 years ago, a plane crash killed not just elite athletes but also their coaches – leaving seismic voids in US figure skating for generations to come. The talent included US ice dance champions Diane Carol Sherbloom and Larry Pierce; Olympic pairs skaters Maribel Yerxa Owen and Dudley Shaw Richards; and Owen’s mother, renowned coach Maribel Yerxa Vinson-Owen.
In honor of those victims, US Figure Skating established a memorial fund that has given “more than $20 million in financial support to thousands of athletes for skating-related and academic expenses,” according to the group’s website.
Now, “this sport is dealing with another tragedy of this magnitude involving air travel,” CNN sports analyst Christine Brennan said.
Once again, the calamity severed the dreams of young athletes “and their hopes and their dreams to represent the United States in international competition and the Olympics.”
More bodies have been recovered over the past hour from the wreckage of the plane and helicopter collision in Washington, DC, a law enforcement source told CNN.
The mangled wreckage in the Potomac River is making the recovery effort particularly difficult for the dive teams, who have had trouble accessing parts of the plane’s fuselage.
It has been an extensive recovery effort described as including essentially every dive team in the area.
Firefighters arrived on the scene in a fire boat just seven minutes after receiving the alert about the midair collision between a military Black Hawk helicopter and an American Airlines jet, Edward Kelly, general president of the International Association of Fire Fighters, told CNN on Thursday.
“They had a lot working against them. They had the current in the river. They had jet fuel all over in the water with them. They had debris. They had ice. Like I said, the swift current was a challenge, searching the fuselage – there’s a lot of sharp objects in the cockpit – so it was a very difficult and risky and dangerous rescue attempt,” Kelly said.
There were close to 50 divers in the water responding to the incident at one point, he said.
“One thing that was a blessing was the civilian dinner boat in DC did a trip up the Potomac yesterday, which actually broke the ice that allowed the smaller boats to respond to the actual crash last night,” he noted.
Officials believe there are no survivors of the collision and have recovered 28 bodies so far.
With the operation now shifted from a rescue to a recovery mission, Kelly said responders will adopt a more methodical approach, prioritizing safety. For instance, responders won’t perform dangerous night dives, he said.
Hazardous materials in the water also make the recovery mission harder, Kelly said.
“It’s contaminating our dive suits,” he said. “Some of our dive suits were ripped during the course of the searches, which compromised them.”
However, the divers can stay down longer because the water is not too deep — only about eight feet in some areas — Kelly said.
The captain of the American Airlines flight involved in Wednesday’s midair collision was Jonathan Campos, according to a fellow pilot from the airline who knew Campos personally.
Campos became a captain for American Airlines in 2022, his colleague said.
No other information about Campos was immediately available.
Some context: One of the American Airlines pilots, 28-year-old Samuel Lilley, has also been confirmed as a victim after the midair collision, his father told CNN. Lilley was the first officer on the flight, his father said in a Facebook post. “I was so proud when Sam became a pilot,” Timothy Lilley wrote. “Now it hurts so bad I can’t even cry myself to sleep. I know I’ll see him again but my heart is breaking.”
Tennessee Garvey, a pilot and the chair of the Organization of Black Aerospace Professionals, pushed back against President Donald Trump’s comments appearing to blame diversity initiatives for a deadly plane collision Wednesday night.
Garvey called the president’s remarks on Thursday from the White House briefing room “very concerning.”
“Diversity hiring initiatives have never been attributed to any aviation accidents or incidents, so it sends the wrong information and it also sends miscommunication about truly what diversity hiring is,” Garvey told CNN.
During his remarks, Trump appeared to blame a “diversity push” at the Federal Aviation Administration, without evidence, for the midair collision. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy also alluded to Trump’s comments, saying that “we can only accept the best and the brightest in positions of safety that impact the lives of our loved ones, our family members.”
Garvey said the reason that organizations like his exist it to “create opportunities to underrepresented communities.” Responding to Trump’s claim that diversity efforts lowered standards for hiring, Garvey said in his 22 years in the industry, “I’ve never seen anything like that.”
“There’s very stringent standards in place that have allowed, you know, especially aviation within the United States, to be very safe,” Garvey said. “Irrespective of your background and, again, or your skin color, everyone has to go through the same training program.”
Garvey said there is also ongoing training that ensures that both pilots and air traffic controllers “maintain a very high level of proficiency and skill set.”
“There have been never lowering of any standards,” he said, adding that if anything, he has seen the standards increase over the years.
The instructor pilot on the US Army Black Hawk helicopter that was conducting a training mission over the Potomac on Wednesday had about 1,000 flight hours, and the copilot who was being evaluated had about 500 hours, according to Army official Jonathan Koziol, a retired CW5 aviation expert and chief of staff of the Army’s Aviation Directorate.
Both are considered experienced, given that the Black Hawk training missions typically last around two hours each, Koziol said.
Samuel Lilley, 28, one of the pilots of the American Airlines jet that collided midair with a military Black Hawk helicopter, has been confirmed as a victim, his father told CNN.
“I was so proud when Sam became a pilot,” Timothy Lilley said in a Facebook post on Thursday. “Now it hurts so bad I can’t even cry myself to sleep. I know I’ll see him again but my heart is breaking.”
His son, who was engaged and expected to get married in the fall, was “doing great in his career and his personal life,” Lilley said in the post.
Lilley was the first officer on the deadly flight, the post said.
“It is so devastating to lose someone that is loved so much,” Lilley said.
“This is undoubtedly the worst day of my life,” he told non-affilliate FOX 5 Atlanta.
A longtime pilot himself, Lilley told Fox 5 Atlanta he was in New York for work when he realized his son was in the cockpit at the time of the accident. He initially couldn’t believe it was his son’s flight, but when Sam failed to check in—something he always did— he said his worst fears were confirmed.
Lilley, who served 20 years as a helicopter pilot in the Army, is familiar with the complexities of such operations.
“I was a helicopter pilot in the Army for 20 years. In the ’90s, I used to fly in and out of the Pentagon regularly, and I can tell you if you are flying on the route over the Potomac and wearing night vision goggles, it’s going to be very hard to see that plane. If you’re not wearing the goggles, then you might have a chance,” Lilley told Fox 5 Atlanta.
He said he believes the commercial PSA jet involved in the incident was following proper procedures, but the military helicopter made a tragic error.
“From what I can see, those guys turned right into the jet. I think the PSA jet was doing everything right. The Army pilot made a grave error. It hurts me because those are my brothers, and now my son is dead,” Lilley told Fox 5 Atlanta.
Figure skater Spencer Lane, one of the victims in the plane crash, posted a photo showing the right wing of an airplane on his Instagram Stories on Wednesday before the plane took off.
The photo has the caption “ICT -> DCA”, which are the airport codes for Wichita Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport and Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
Lane and his mother had just attended the US Figure Skating Championships and National Development Camp in Wichita, Kansas. They were identified as two of the passengers on board American Airlines Flight 5342, which crashed into the Potomac River on Wednesday after colliding with a US Army helicopter.
