Passenger Jet With 64 Aboard Collides With Army Helicopter While Landing At Reagan Airport Near DC

An American Airlines jet carrying 60 passengers and four crew members collided with an Army helicopter while landing at Ronald Reagan National Airport near Washington, prompting a large search-and-rescue operation in the nearby Potomac River. There were multiple fatalities, according to a person familiar with the matter, but the precise number of victims was unclear as rescue crews hunted for any survivors.

Three soldiers were onboard the helicopter, an Army official said.

There was no immediate word on the cause of the Wednesday collision, but all takeoffs and landings from the airport were halted as dive teams scoured the site and helicopters from law enforcement agencies across the region flew over the scene in a methodical search for bodies.

Images from the river showed boats around the partly submerged wing and what appeared to be the mangled wreckage of the plane’s fuselage.

“We are going to recover our fellow citizens,” District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser said at a somber news conference at the airport in which she declined to say how many bodies had been recovered.

Read more: AP