Fatalities confirmed after passenger plane collides in U.S.

By Helen Regan, Taylor Romine, Dalia Faheid, Jamiel Lynch, Amir Vera, Hanna Park and Karina Tsui, Jan 30: A massive search operation is underway after a passenger aircraft carrying 64 people collided midair with a US Army Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan National Airport outside of Washington, DC, according to aviation and defence officials.

About 300 first responders are searching the freezing Potomac River, where the aircraft crashed, the DC fire chief said.

Fatalities have been confirmed and rescuers have not yet pulled any survivors from the water, a law enforcement source said. The source says the plane is in pieces in the water and the helicopter is in the water nearby. The airport will be closed until at least 11 a.m. ET Thursday, airport officials said.

The plane, American Airlines Flight 5342 with 60 passengers and four crew members on board, had departed from Wichita, Kansas, according to the airline. Three soldiers were on board the helicopter, which was on a training flight, officials say.

President Donald Trump called the crash “a bad situation that looks like it should have been prevented” in a post on Truth Social.

DC’s Fire and EMS Chief John A. Donnelly Sr. said that all search-and-rescue efforts taking place right now are in the water and that conditions are “dangerous.”

“The challenges are access. The water that we’re operating in is about 8 feet deep, there is wind, there is pieces of ice out there so it’s just dangerous and hard to work in,” Donnelly said. “The water is dark, it is murky, and that is a very tough condition for them to dive in.”

He added that recovery efforts will likely take several days.

“If you can imagine, the river is a large black spot at night with no lights on it, except for a few buoy lights,” he said.

Donnelly said he expected the investigation into the collision to take longer.