The collision between an American Airlines Group Inc. regional jet and a military helicopter near Ronald Reagan airport in Washington left no survivors on board the two aircraft, authorities said, making it one of the most deadly U.S. air disasters in decades and an early test for President Donald Trump’s administration in his second week in office.

American Flight 5342 that had come in from Wichita, Kansas, with 60 passengers and four crew hit a Sikorsky H-60 Black Hawk helicopter with three military personnel on board while approaching the runway just before 9 p.m. local time on Wednesday. Rescue crews worked through the night to retrieve any survivors, but by early morning their mission had turned into a salvage operation, they said at a press briefing at the airport.

“At this point, we don’t believe that there are any survivors from this accident,” Fire and Emergency Medical Services Chief John Donnelly said. “These responders found extremely frigid conditions. They found heavy wind. They found ice on the water, and they’ve operated all night in those conditions.”

The collision adds to a growing number of deadly aviation accidents over the past year, following an extended period of practically no fatalities in the civil aviation industry.

On Jan. 2, 2024, a Japan Airlines Airbus A350 collided with a smaller aircraft as it landed in Tokyo, killing everyone on board the stationary plane but sparing those on the widebody jet, which was destroyed in a subsequent fire. Last month, a Boeing 737 attempting an emergency landing in South Korea skidded on its belly into a concrete wall that sat just beyond the runway. The Dec. 29 incident killed all but two of the 181 passengers and crew on board.

Footage of Wednesday’s deadly crash shared on social media showed the two aircraft colliding in the night sky and exploding into a fiery ball before falling into the river. The fuselage of the regional jet was found upside down in three sections in the river, and the salvage mission is being complicated by the fact that the crash area is somewhat spread out, Donnelly said.

The disaster will be closely watched for its political handling. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was sworn into his job just days ago, and Sean Duffy, who as Transportation secretary oversees the FAA, was confirmed on Tuesday. The FAA doesn’t have an administrator at the moment, after Mike Whitaker stepped down on the day of Trump’s inauguration.

Trump voiced his own frustration around the collision, saying in a Truth Social post that the airplane was on a “perfect and routine” line of approach.

“The helicopter was going straight at the airplane for an extended period of time,” he wrote. “It is a CLEAR NIGHT, the lights on the plane were blazing, why didn’t the helicopter go up or down, or turn.”

Speaking at a press conference later on Thursday, Trump praised first responders, including the military and the U.S. Coast Guard.

“They’ve done a phenomenal job,” he said. “So quick, so fast it was mobilized immediately.”

Among the passengers on the American flight were members of the U.S. figure-skating community who were returning from the national championships in Wichita, U.S. Figure Skating said in a post on X. AFP, citing Russian news agencies, said that a Russian champion skating couple were also onboard.

The crash revived memories of an air disaster in January 1982, when an Air Florida Boeing Co. 737 struggled for altitude after taking off with ice in it engines and on the wings, struck the 14th Street bridge and then slammed into the frozen Potomac. Most of the people on board were killed, alongside four motorists on the ground.

The aircraft involved in Wednesday’s collision typically seats 65 people and is generally used for shorter trips. Republican Senator Jerry Moran of Kansas said the particular route is a flight he’s “very familiar with,” having flown from Wichita to Reagan airport “many times.” The jet was flying at 228 kilometers (142 miles) per hour about 400 feet above the river on approach for landing on runway 33 at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport before data stopped recording, according to Flightradar24.

Reagan airport has suspended all aircraft take-offs and landings in response to the incident, the airport operator said. The airport said it would remain closed until 11 a.m. local time.

“It’s just dangerous and hard to work in,” Donnelly said at an earlier briefing. “There’s not a lot of lights, you’re out there searching every square inch of space to see if you can find anybody. The divers are doing the same thing in the water. The water is dark, it is murky, and that is a very tough condition for them to dive in.

The most recent U.S. passenger airplane to crash in the country resulting in a significant number of casualties was Colgan Air Flight 3407 near Buffalo, New York, in 2009. The flight, carrying 45 passengers, was a regional feeder to Continental Airlines. The mid-2013 crash-landing of Asiana Airlines Flight 214 in San Francisco killed three people.

American Airlines said it is in contact with and assisting first responders. It also has set up a toll-free information line for family members of passengers on the flight. The plane flew under the banner of American Eagle, a network of six regional carriers operating for the larger airline, three of which are owned by American. PSA Airlines, which was operating the flight, is the smallest of those three, using 130 aircraft on an average of 600 daily flights. It’s based in Dayton, Ohio.

The National Transportation Safety Board will lead the investigation, aided by the Federal Aviation Administration. The NTSB said it has dispatched a rapid-response team to work on the probe.

Duffy, who also spoke at the briefing, pointed out that he’s been in the job for little over a day. He said that while it’s too soon to say what caused the accident, there will be “a review of what happened here tonight, and after the FAA studies what happened, we will take appropriate action if necessary, to modify flight paths and permissions.”

Reagan Airport is in Arlington, Virginia, just across the river from the nation’s capital and just south of the Pentagon. The White House is just a few miles away, making the area one of the most heavily surveilled air spaces on the planet.

Trump said on Wednesday night that he had been “fully briefed” on the incident and is monitoring the situation. Hegseth said the agency was actively monitoring the situation and was “poised to assist.”

“We will provide all resources necessary as we go through this recovery,” Duffy said.

—With assistance from Siddharth Philip, Danny Lee, Skylar Woodhouse, John Harney, Derek Wallbank, Richard Clough and Tony Capaccio.

©2025 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.