American Airlines Flight Collides with United States Military Helicopter over Potomac

Allison Bennett

Staff Writer

On January 29, a regional American Airlines flight out of Wichita, Kansas collided with an Army Black Hawk helicopter over the Potomac River while attempting to land at Washington’s Reagan National Airport. All 64 aboard the plane and the three soldiers on the helicopter were killed, CNN reports. President Donald Trump said there were no survivors, marking this the deadliest incident involving a United States commercial airline since 2009, when Colgan Air Flight 3407 crashed in Buffalo, New York, killing all 49 people on board, reports CBS News. 

Among the passengers of the American Airlines flight were members of Team USA’s figure skating team returning from a camp following the 2025 U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Wichita. CBS News reports that the Skating Club of Boston confirms they lost six members in the crash, two of which were rising stars, family members of the skaters, and two coaches. A group of hunters returning from a guided trip in Kansas, four members of a steamfitters’ local union in suburban Maryland, nine students and parents from Fairfax County, Virginia, and two Chinese nationals were among those on board the American Airlines flight, The Associated Press says. The Army has identified the three soldiers on board the Black Hawk as Captain Rebecca M. Lobach, Staff Sergeant Ryan Austin O’Hara, and Chief Warrant Officer 2 Andrew Loyd Eaves. A statement by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) confirms that all 67 bodies have been recovered from the Potomac River, while the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers continue to remove the wreckage.

Investigations into the crash concluded that the passenger jet was at around 325 feet, while the Army Black Hawk helicopter was flying at 300 feet, above the maximum altitude of 200 feet for the route it was using. Reuters writes that data confirms that air traffic control alerted the helicopter to the presence of the plane about two minutes before the collision. The New York Times reports that shortly before the collision, the pilots of the American Airlines flight were asked to pivot their landing route from one runway to another. In the aftermath of the incident, the FAA imposed heavy restrictions on helicopter flights around Reagan National until at least late February, with two of the lesser-used runways remaining closed. The National Transportation Safety Board has interviewed all five people working in the control tower at the time of the collision and collected data from the black boxes, maintenance, and flight logs to begin piecing together a timeline of events. Investigators are also looking into whether the Army Black Hawk helicopter had been flying outside of its designated path, as well as if late-night staffing at the airport’s air traffic control tower, which was described as “not normal” in a preliminary FAA report, played a role in the accident. 

In another article, CBS News reports that just one day before this incident, another regional jet about to land at Reagan National had a close call with a helicopter as pilots received an alert from the onboard collision avoidance system about a military helicopter and aborted landing attempt. CBS News identified four other close calls between passenger jets and helicopters around the airport, including a 2018 incident where pilots had to take last-second evasive measures to avoid an FAA landing on the same runway after an air traffic controller failed to warn the two aircrafts in advance. 

The Associated Press reports that on January 21, President Trump fired the heads of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and the Coast Guard, as well as disbanding the Aviation Security Advisory Committee. Investigators and spectators question if some of Trump’s policies contributed to the crash. It is also reported that President Trump froze the hiring of all Air Traffic Controllers and fired 100 top FAA security officers. However, Aviation experts say Trump had done little to contribute to the crash as there was simply “too little time”—less than 10 days after Trump was sworn into office—for any of his executive orders to have had an effect, Al Jazeera reports. 

Image courtesy of Getty Images.