Summary
An American Airlines regional jet carrying 64 people collided midair with a Sikorsky H-60 military helicopter near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Wednesday night.
The PSA Airlines Bombardier CRJ700 was on approach from Wichita when the crash occurred around 9 p.m. ET. At least one aircraft ended up in the Potomac River, prompting a major emergency response.
The FAA closed the airport, and the NTSB is leading the investigation.
This is terrible tragedy. It’s been few hours since the accident and no words on survivors so it’s looking grim. NTSB has lot of work to do to figure out what happened so it won’t happen again.
Edit: Just watching the press conference at 1am and they won’t talk about survivors or fatalities. It’s a bad sign.
2nd Edit: blancolirio video Juan Browne does excellent analysis on aircraft incidents.
3rd Edit: 2nd blancolirio video This update is tough to watch.
Cliffs notes:
Plane coming in to land
Tower requests runway change
Helicopter flying a dedicated path near the airport
Heli path has max altitude of 200ft
Tower asks for visual confirmation from heli of plane (fairly late)
Heli confirms, requests visual separation (meaning heli will handle separation of aircraft visually)
(Note: Multiple of same plane coming in to land)
Heli reaches 300ft alt a few seconds before plane arrival
Plane coming in to land also approaching 300ft
Contact
YTer suspects heli pilots confirmed visual of the wrong plane due to multiple Bluestreak planes coming in for landing.
The Potomac is not a gentle river. Even if people survived to get into the water it would be very difficult to survive. And the water is freezing too.
Agreed that press conference and the far away footage not good. River is very cold and icy as well
That area is not very windy but 32-34F which is pretty cold. Not good.