A deadly collision on Wednesday night between an American Airlines plane with 60 passengers and four crew and an Army UH-60 Black Hawk with three soldiers remains under investigation amid questions about how the crash occurred.
Authorities said Thursday morning that they don’t believe there are any survivors from the crash, and added they pulled at least 28 bodies out of the Potomac River.
American Eagle flight 5342, a passenger jet coming from Wichita, Kansas, collided with the Black Hawk as the plane was returning to Reagan Washington National Airport in Arlington, Va., before 9 p.m. on Wednesday.
The passengers on the jet included U.S. and Russian figure skaters, coaches and their family members returning from the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Wichita.
Not much is known about why the helicopter crashed into the plane, but images shared online showed a fiery explosion as the two collided mid-air over the night sky.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared a statement that said the Black Hawk was from the Army’s Bravo Company, 12th Aviation Battalion, out of Davison Army Airfield in Fort Belvoir in Virginia.
Hegseth wrote on X that the Army and the Pentagon were investigating the crash along with local authorities. Federal authorities, including the National Transportation Safety Board, are also investigating.
The Defense chief added in a video that the Army battalion involved in the Black Hawk that crashed would be grounded for a 48-hour operational pause amid the military investigations, which he expects to quickly conclude whether the helicopter was flying at the right altitude and corridor.
Hegseth noted that it was an annual proficiency training flight, and while they were not releasing names at the moment, they know the individuals involved. Later Thursday, he named the ranks of the soldiers who had died: A captain, staff sergeant and chief warrant officer.
“It was a fairly experienced crew,” he said. “It’s a tragedy, a horrible loss of life.”
President Trump appeared to blame the Black Hawk for the crash in a Truth Social post, writing that the “airplane was on a perfect and routine line of approach to the airport” on a clear night with its lights on, and “the helicopter was going straight at the airplane for an extended period of time” and didn’t maneuver out of the way.
Trump during a briefing Thursday said the cause of the crash was unknown but blamed the Biden administration for the tragedy for implementing diversity, equity and inclusion programs at the Federal Aviation Administration.
But he also faulted the military helicopter, saying it had a view of the passenger plane and “did the opposite of what it was told,” though Trump also said there was little time to maneuver.
“For some reason there weren’t adjustments made. You could have slowed down the helicopter substantially,” Trump said. “You could have stopped the helicopter. You could have gone up, you could have gone down.”
“You could have gone straight up, straight down, you could have turned.,” the president added. “You could have done a million different maneuvers. For some reason it just kept going and then made a slight turn at the very end, [which] was, by that time, it was too late.”
Trump also asserted that the Black Hawk may have been using night vision, which could be a “reason why you wouldn’t actually see as well as on a clear night, you can see sometimes better without it.”
Hegseth said at the briefing that “the military does dangerous things” on a routine basis.
“Tragically, last night, a mistake was made. I think the President is right. There was some sort of an elevation issue that we have immediately begun investigating at the DoD and Army level,” he said.
Black Hawks are the primary medium-lift and air assault helicopter for the Army. They are manufactured by Sikorsky and made their debut in 1979. There are around 4,000 Black Hawks deployed around the world.
Around 60 people have died in Black Hawk-related crashes in the past decade, and two of the helicopters crashed into each other in 2023. However, the helicopter has a relatively low mishap rate compared to other similar aircraft.
The military frequently conducts training flights around the nation’s capital, and it is not unusual for the Black Hawk to have been on a routine training mission at the time.
But Daniel Driscoll, Trump’s nominee for secretary of the Army, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday that he would consider more scrutiny on where training flights are held.
“We might need to look at where is an appropriate time to take training risk, and it may not be near an airport like Reagan,” Driscoll said.
