Wednesday’s crash of an American Airlines jet on final approach to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport was the deadliest U.S. air disaster in decades. Here are some of the people we lost in the crash plus the latest information on what might have caused the crash.
The Washington, D.C. area’s jam-packed airspace has led to warnings for years and air-traffic controllers are among the federal employees that the Trump administration has asked to resign.
An Army helicopter appears to have deviated from its approved flight path near Reagan National Airport, and the air traffic controller on duty was said to be doing a job usually handled by two people. The military helicopter appears to also have been flying too high according to one person briefed on the matter but not authorized to speak publicly.
An air-traffic controller appears to warned the helicopter pilot to keep watch for the passenger jet. As the plane approached a runway, the controller reached out to an Army helicopter that was approaching the plane’s flight path.
“Do you have CRJ in sight?” the controller asked, according to a radio traffic feed on LiveATC.net, a website broadcasts air traffic control communications. A helicopter pilot responded that he did, saying that he would use visual separation.
Prior to the crash, commercial pilots had complained about military aircraft. New footage reveals just how close Black Hawks fly to passenger jets in the D.C. area.
Meanwhile, the crash tore through the world of elite figure skating in a tragic case of déjà vu. On Wednesday, figure skaters representing past, present and future generations of the sport died in the crash, bringing to mind memories of the 1961 plane crash of Sabena Flight 548. That ill-fated flight was carrying the entire U.S. figure skating team to the World Figure Skating championships in Prague. That crash killed 73 people including all 18 team members, a disaster killed not just elite athletes but also their coaches, leaving a void in U.S. figure skating for generations to come.
The Skating Club of Boston said six people with ties to its club were killed:
- Jinna Han, a skater, and her mother, Jin Han.
- Spencer Lane, a skater, and his mother, Christine
- Yevgeniya Shishkova, 52, and Vadim Naumov, 55, two coaches who were also champion skaters from Russia.
- Cory Haynos, a teenage skater from Northern Virginia, and his parents Stephanie and Roger were also on board the flight, relatives said in interviews and social-media posts.
The four-person crew of American Flight 5342 perished. Among the crew members were pilot Jonathan J. Campos, 34; co-pilot Sam Lilley, 28; and flight attendant Danasia Brown Elder.
Finally, seven friends on the flight were returning from a duck hunting trip in the Kanses woods. The friends included Michael Stovall, 40, and Jesse Pitcher, relatives said.
As aviation officials rush to determine the cause of the midair collision on Wednesday, the catastrophe is drawing fresh attention to the longstanding warnings by airmen about the busy airspace over the nation’s capital.
With the spotlight on the airspace, the FAA paused some flights into Reagan National Airport for about an hour this morning, citing heavy traffic volume. Later Friday morning, the agency says it was slowing flights into the airport due to low cloud ceiling.
(Photo: Accura Media Group)
