WASHINGTON — An American Airlines Group Inc. regional jet collided with a military helicopter near Washington, D.C., on Wednesday leaving no survivors, marking one of the deadliest U.S. air disasters in decades.

The aircraft crashed into the Potomac River close to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, presenting an early test for members of President Donald Trump’s administration who have only just taken office.

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

“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 National Transportation Safety Board said in a statement late Thursday that investigators have recovered the cockpit voice and flight data recorders from the CRJ-700 airplane. The recorders — often referred to as “black boxes” despite their orange color — are now at the NTSB labs for evaluation.

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 NTSB will lead the investigation, aided by the Federal Aviation Administration. The NTSB expects to produce a preliminary report within 30 days of the accident, but the agency said Thursday that it would not speculate about possible causes. A final report could take 12 to 24 months.

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 Tuesday. The FAA doesn’t have a Senate-confirmed 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 news conference later Thursday, Trump praised first responders, including the military and the U.S. Coast Guard.

He also politicized the situation, faulting diversity, equity and inclusion programs while acknowledging that he didn’t know the true cause of the deadly crash.

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 aboard.

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 its 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 airplane involved in Wednesday’s collision typically seats 65 people and is generally used for shorter trips. Republican Sen. 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.

The initial search was complicated by conditions, including darkness and murky water, Donnelly said at an earlier briefing.

“It’s just dangerous and hard to work in,” he said. “There’s not a lot of lights, you’re out there searching every square inch of space to see if you can find anybody.”

Reagan airport temporarily suspended all aircraft takeoffs and landings in response to the incident. Operations resumed Thursday.

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 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.

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 airspaces on the planet.

Duffy said that while it’s too soon to say what caused the accident, there will be a review and “we will take appropriate action, if necessary, to modify flight paths and permissions.”

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(Siddharth Philip, Danny Lee, Skylar Woodhouse, John Harney, Derek Wallbank, Tony Capaccio and Ryan Beene contributed to this report.)

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