Politics
DC Fire Chief Shares Tragic Update On Deadly Plane Crash: ‘We Don’t Think There Are Any Survivors’
A horrific Wednesday night collision between an American Airlines flight and Army helicopter above Washington, D.C. has only grown grimmer over the night’s darkest hours as first responders scoured the frigid, icy waters of the Potomac for signs of life.
By the following morning, 27 bodies had been recovered and leaders of the effort said they fail to see how anyone could have survived the mid-air tragedy.
“We have recovered 27 people from the plane and one from the helicopter,” John Donnelly, Chief of the District of Columbia Fire Department, told media outlets, adding, “We don’t think there are any survivors from this accident.”
American Airlines Flight 5342 was en route to Reagan International Airport and directed to land at Runway 33 shortly before the crash. Air Traffic Control officers witnessed the plane collide with an Army Black Hawk helicopter about 40 seconds after sending final instructions to the aircraft carrying 60 passengers.
Donnelly said the response effort will now shift to locating the bodies of the deceased.
“Despite all these efforts, we are now at a point where we are switching from a rescue operation to a recovery operation,” he told Fox News.
“The district office of the medical examiner has lead on reuniting these bodies and these people, with their loved ones,” Donnelly continued. “And we will continue to work to find all the bodies and collect them and reunite them with their loved ones.”
Others traveling aboard the aircrafts included four crew members with the commercial flight and three soldiers aboard the Army helicopter.
Audio from the control center reveals what appears to be a stunned ATC center in charge of landing the aircraft and instructing the Army Black Hawk, a UH-60 helicopter Sikorsky UH-60 helicopter, referred to as “PAT25,” to pass behind the jet.
“Tower Did you see that?” ground traffic radioed to the tower.
“Yup we saw it,” someone from above replies. Controllers moved to begin diverting all flights.
“Everybody hold your positions on the field right now,” a female controller says.
“Fire command. The accident happened in the river. Both the helicopter and the plane crashed in the river… he approached into Runway 33,” she says.
A senior U.S. Department of Defense official told Fox News that the Army pilot was “fairly experienced” with the Black Hawk under his control and was equipped with night vision.
Aviation analyst Kyle Bailey told Fox that the collision amounts to a “perfect storm” in the industry, akin to walking outside and being struck by lightning.
“It was the perfect storm of events that happened last night,” he said, adding it is “unfair to cast blame at this early stage.”
“The U.S. military runs an incredible aviation operation,” he said. “But distractions do happen, and all humans make errors.”
Still, the tragedy presents an early first test for the Trump administration and comes one day after transportation secretary Sean Duffy was confirmed for his position. The former reality TV star said Thursday that he sees what transpired over D.C. as “absolutely preventable.”
“We are going to wait for all the information to come in from this vantage point,” he said Thursday.
“But to back up what the president said and what I’ve seen so far, do I think this was preventable? Absolutely,” he added.
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