The CEO of American Airlines has expressed his ‘deep sorrow’ following the horror plane crash which rocked the US last night (29 January).

Dozens are feared dead after the passenger jet, which had 64 people onboard, collided mid-air with a US army helicopter as it approached the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

The aircraft plunged into the Potomac River and ‘split in half’, according to NBC 4 Washington, before sinking around ‘seven feet underwater’.

The incident occurred at around 9.00pm local time when the PSA Airlines jet – which was operating as American Airlines 5432 – was preparing to land.

The Bombardier CRJ700 had departed from Wichita, Kansas and was set to touch down on Runway 33 at the airport when it collided with the military chopper.

Rescue efforts remain underway in Washington DC (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

It smashed into a Sikorsky H-60, which had taken off from Fort Belvoir in Virginia and was carrying three US soldiers, according to the Pentagon.

Chilling audio recorded in the aftermath of the devastating crash has emerged, where an airline official can be heard describing a ‘fireball’ erupting in front of their eyes.

Emergency responders are still scouring the Potomac River for survivors, with the BBC reporting that at least 19 bodies have been pulled from the water so far.

American Airlines boss Robert Isom said he was heading to Washington DC with a specialist team to help aid the investigation into the crash.

The 58-year-old is the CEO of both American Airlines Group and its principal subsidiary company, American Airlines, which is a position he has held since March 2022.

Isom shared a statement regarding the tragedy late last night before he travelled to the US capital.

While expressing his ‘deep sorrow’ about the incident, Isom said: “This is a difficult day for all of us at American Airlines and our efforts now are focused entirely on the needs of our passengers, crew members, partners, first responders, along with their families and loved ones.

“I know that there are many questions. At this early stage, I’ll not be able to answer all of them, but I do want to share the information I have at this time.”

He explained that the American Airlines plane, which had 60 passengers and four crew members on board, had ‘collided with a military aircraft’ on approach to the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

Isom continued: “We are actively working with local, state and federal authorities on emergency response efforts, and the American Airlines care team has been activated to assist our passengers and their families.

“We’re cooperating fully with the National Transportation Safety Board in its investigation, and we’ll continue to provide all the information we can.

“Our cooperation is without pause, and we want to learn everything we can about today’s events.

“That work will take time, but anything we can do now, we’re doing, and right now that means focusing on taking care of all passengers and crew involved, as well as their families.

“Members of our Go Team will be on their way to Washington, D.C., and I’ll be heading there shortly as well.”

American Airlines CEO Robert Isom shared his ‘deep sorrow’ in a statement (American Airlines)

Isom explained a special helpline (1-800-679-8215) had been set up for those who have loved ones on the plane, while he promised to ‘continue to share accurate and timely information’.

“But anything we must report must be accurate,” the CEO said. “We owe that to everyone involved.

“Our team of highly trained professionals will be working around the clock to support our passengers, crew and their families, however we can, and we’ll update you as soon as we can.”

According to Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority CEO Jack Potter, a host of people ‘were at the airport to pick up loved ones’ when news of the crash broke.

The airport will remain closed until at least 11.00am local time today, Potter added.

US Figure Skating, which is the American governing body for the sport, has announced that a number of athletes and coaches were on board the fateful flight.

In a statement, it said: “These athletes, coaches, and family members were returning home from the National Development Camp held in conjunction with the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Wichita, Kansas.

“We are devastated by this unspeakable tragedy and hold the victims’ families closely in our hearts. We will continue to monitor the situation and will release more information as it becomes available.”

An off-duty pilot that once ‘tried to crash a plane’ after he had taken mushrooms has explained what was going through his head during the ordeal.

On 22 October 2023, Joseph David Emerson attempted to crash Alaska Airlines Flight 2059 while in the cockpit.

The pilot has since been arrested and charged with 83 counts of attempted murder, as well as one count of endangering an aircraft. He is currently awaiting trial.

Flight 2059 was heading to San Francisco, California, from Everett, Washington in the USA.

Just last year, a year on from the horrific event, Emerson spoke to ABC News about what he was thinking at the time.

Two days prior to the flight’s departure, the Alaska Airlines pilot admitted that he, along with some friends, took psychedelic mushrooms.

Also known as shrooms, the Class A drug can cause hallucinations and distort reality. Emerson said that they did it in memory of his friend’s death, who had passed six years earlier.

However, he said that the effects lasted days after taking them, and he didn’t feel right when travelling to the airport for his flight.

The pilot said he could only think about being at home with his family, with fears setting in that he would never make it back as he took his seat in the cockpit of the jet.

He said to ABC News: “There was a feeling of being trapped, like, ‘Am I trapped in this airplane and now I’ll never go home?’,” Emerson told ABC News, in an interview near his home in California.

He claims he started to believe that what he was seeing wasn’t real, convincing himself that he was not actually going home, as his friend sent him a text saying to do some breathing exercises to calm down.

The pilot said that he thought he was trapped in the plane (Sam Sweeney/ABC News)

He said his phone read the text in his ear, pushing him off the edge: “That’s kind of where I flung off my headset, and I was fully convinced this isn’t real and I’m not going home.

“And then, as the pilots didn’t react to my completely abnormal behavior in a way that I thought would be consistent with reality, that is when I was like, this isn’t real. I need to wake up,” he claimed.

The next 30 seconds were where the problems began.

The off-duty pilot recalled: “There are two red handles in front of my face.

“And thinking that I was going to wake up, thinking this is my way to get out of this non-real reality, I reached up and I grabbed them, and I pulled the levers.”

It turned out that these were the engine shut-off controls, which would have put everyone onboard at danger of death.

“What I thought is, ‘This is going to wake me up’,” he said.

“I know what those levers do in a real airplane and I need to wake up from this. You know, it’s 30 seconds of my life that I wish I could change, and I can’t.”

Luckily, the pilots pulled his hands away, bewildered by his behaviour, while Emerson said that ‘the pilot’s physical touch’ snapped him out of it, as he became aware that it was all real.

Speaking of luck, his actions didn’t cause any danger, and the engines continued to operate normally. The pilots booted him out of the cockpit, and he drank directly from a coffee pot and sat in the flight attendant’s jump seat.

Luckily for everyone onboard, the plane’s engines didn’t shut down (Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Shortly after though, he then went back to hallucinating, revealing: “At some point I thought maybe this isn’t real, and maybe I can wake myself up by just jumping out, like that freefall feeling that you have.”

And just like that, Emerson grabbed the cabin door lever, attempting to pull it open, before a flight attendant stopped him by putting her hand on his, again waking him out of the trip and making him aware that it was all real.

He texted his wife during the flight, declaring: “I made a big mistake.”

His wife, Sarah Emerson, replied: “What’s up? Are you ok?”

“I’m not,” Emerson responded.

He quickly asked the flight attendant to handcuff him before he did any more harm, hoping to get help when the plane landed.

Emerson was taken into custody when the plane landed, spending 45 days behind bars before being granted bond. It took a full four days from the day he took mushrooms to fully recover and return to normal.

The jail physician told him that he had suffered from a condition called hallucinogen persisting perception disorder (HPPD), which can cause a first-time user of psychedelics to suffer from persistent visual hallucinations or perception issues for several days afterward.

Though he is no longer facing murder charges, Emerson is now facing over 80 state and federal charges, which include 83 counts of reckless endangerment after prosecutors reduced the charges in December.

The pilot is currently awaiting trial, which was originally meant to be in the autumn of 2024.

The files relating to John F. Kennedy’s assassination have long remained classified. However, as newly sworn in president Donald Trump orders their release, they may no longer be kept under wraps.

Having sworn into office this week, US President Trump signed an executive order yesterday (23 January) mandating the release of classified files related to the 1963 assassination of JFK, as well as that of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.

Government officials have said these files were initially classified in order to protect national security interests, intelligence sources, and ongoing investigations. And people have long wondered just why they are kept secret as the assassination has fuelled conspiracy theories over the decades.

President Trump signed the order on Thursday (ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP via Getty Images)

“More than 50 years after the assassinations of President John F Kennedy, Senator Robert F Kennedy, and the Rev Dr Martin Luther King, Jr, the federal government has not released to the public all of its records related to those events,” the executive order stated.

“Their families and the American people deserve transparency and truth. It is in the national interest to finally release all records related to these assassinations without delay.”

Trump told reporters ‘everything will be revealed’ as he called the order ‘a big one’.

He had long promised to make the remaining batches of documents on JFK’s assassination public, but researchers don’t believe he’s going to be able to release them all.

The CIA and FBI appealed against a similar pledge when he was first in office and the agencies have previously argued that revealing informants’ identities could pose a risk to individuals.

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) also shared these concerns. In a 2018 letter to the Archives, it laid out how the Mafia’s violent history justifies secrecy being kept.

JFK was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, in 1963. (Bettmann/Getty Images)

“Given the well-documented propensity for violence by the Mafia, it is reasonable to expect the individuals, if alive, remain in significant danger of retaliation,” the DEA wrote.

Plus, the Department of Defence and State Department have cited national security concerns. And on top of that, the Pentagon has insisted that some of the classified documents contain nuclear information, sensitive war plans and intelligence unrelated to the assassination.

There are millions of government records related to JFK’s assassination and only a few thousands are not fully declassified. And many of those who have studied the released documents say that the public shouldn’t expect some kind of ground-breaking revelations.

“There’s always the possibility that something would slip through that would be the tiny tip of a much larger iceberg that would be revealing,” Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics and author of The Kennedy Half-Century told The Guardian.

“That’s what researchers look for. Now, odds are you won’t find that but it is possible that it’s there.”

A man who bought a lifetime first-class plane ticket and used it to go all over the world ended up having it cancelled.

Back in the day, American Airlines was having some financial difficulties and came up with a plan to get some money, they’d sell first-class plane tickets which were valid for a lifetime.

If you bought one of these things you’d fork over $250,000 (£190,000,) and then you could get as much first-class travel as you liked.

It might sound like a bad deal for the airline in the long run, but they needed the money sooner rather than later, but of course they ended up losing out on potentially millions in earnings as the people who bought the tickets got a lot of use out of them.

One of the most famous buyers of these tickets was Chicago man Steve Rothstein, who got his in 1987 and then paid up another $150,000 (£110,000) for the companion pass that let him bring someone along with him.

Steve Rothstein made the most of his unlimited air travel, until in 2008 he was told his ticket had been revoked. (Caroline Rothstein)

The world was his oyster, at least until 2008 when he was boarding a flight with a friend and was handed a letter from American Airlines telling him his ticket was no longer valid.

The airline accused him of fraud, claiming he made a bunch of bookings with the companion pass under names like ‘Bag Rothstein’ and ‘Steve Rothstein Jr’ and letting strangers use the seats he’d booked.

According to their records, between May 2005 and December 2008, he’d booked two seats on a flight over 3,000 times and either cancelled or been a no-show for the vast majority of those.

However, in 2019, Steve’s daughter Caroline claimed in The Guardian that it was her dad’s way of coping with the death of his son Josh, who’d died in 2002 after being hit by a car.

She said her father told her: “When everyone was asleep in the house, and I had nobody to talk to, and I was lonely about Josh’s death, I would telephone American Airlines reservations and speak to the agents about who knows what for an hour and then at the end, they’d ask me, ‘oh, what reservation was I calling about to make’, and I would say, ‘Oh yeah, I need to go to San Francisco next week.'”

His daughter said the reason he booked seats he didn’t use was to cope with the tragic death of his son. (Caroline Rothstein)

He didn’t actually need to travel, but said he thought the airline had ‘logical people for me to speak to’ as they knew him and he knew them.

He also told his daughter he liked to book the seat next to him so it’d be empty and he wouldn’t have to explain to a stranger why he was crying.

Steve, who denied the allegations of fraud made against him, ended up saying ‘I wish I never bought the thing’ of his lifetime plane ticket.

Despite the lawsuits and legal action between Steve and American Airlines, they eventually settled the matter out of court.