
An American Airlines plane with 60 passengers and four crew members onboard collided with a military helicopter near Washington, D.C., on Wednesday night, plunging into the Potomac River.
Washington’s Fire and EMS Chief John Donnelly said Thursday morning that 28 bodies were recovered from the scene: 27 passengers from the jet and one from the helicopter.
“At this point, we don’t believe there are any survivors from this accident,” Donnelly said, adding that first responders were “switching from a rescue operation to a recovery operation.”
The commercial flight from Wichita, Kan., was making its approach to Reagan National Airport when the collision occurred shortly before 9 p.m., according to the Federal Aviation Administration. The Black Hawk helicopter — operating out of Fort Belvoir, Va., with a crew of three — was on a training mission, according to the Defense Department.
Ronald Reagan National Airport reopened at 11 a.m. ET, officials said.
While mourning the victims of the midair collision at the White House, President Trump, without evidence, sought to blame the previous administration’s hiring policies surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion for the deadly crash.
Trump lashed out at a longstanding Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) policy to prioritize diversity in hiring staffers, including air traffic controllers.” They put a big push to put diversity into the FAA’s program,” Trump said. “
Brilliant people have to be in those positions, and their lives are actually shortened, very substantially shortened because of the stress where you have many, many planes coming into one target, and you need a very special talent and a very special genius to be able to do it.” But when pressed for evidence that diversity hiring was to blame for the tragedy,
Trump said he did not have any. “It just could have been,” the president said, later adding: “I have common sense, OK? And unfortunately, a lot of people don’t.”
Trump also said the helicopter pilot may have been at fault but did not offer specific evidence for his claim.
Leave a Reply