A helicopter and an American Airlines regional jet collided over the Potomac River near Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C., resulting in the deaths of all 64 passengers on the plane and the three people on board the helicopter. Air traffic control recordings reveal the chaos and confusion in the moments leading up to the crash.
An American Airlines plane is parked at a gate at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Wednesday, Jan. 29, 2025, in Arlington, Va. The question to air traffic control from an unidentified aircraft was among the transmissions that poured in late Wednesday from cockpit crews. All around Ronald Reagan National airport, pilots were trying to make sense of thewhen the two aircraft crossed flight paths as the jet prepared to land.
Their exchanges were made available on LiveATC.net, which streams and archives thousands of air traffic control feeds from around the world. The archives of the ATC recordings don’t reveal whether the pilot of the helicopter responded to the air traffic controller. The regional plane was preparing to land on runway 33, a good two hours after it had taken off from Wichita, Kansas. Footage of Wednesday’s deadly crash shared on social media showed the two aircraft colliding in the night sky and exploding before falling into the river, just miles from the White House.A few hours later at a press conference at the airport, rescue teams said the fuselage of the regional jet had been found lying upside down in the river, broken up into three pieces.
Passengers on the flight included a group of figure skaters, their coaches and family members who were returning from a development camp that followed the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Wichita.Maps show the site of the collision in relation to Ronald Reagan National Airport and the jet’s flight path.
AIRPLANE CRASH HELICOPTER COLLISION RONALD REAGAN NATIONAL AIRPORT AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL FATAL ACCIDENT
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