Officials are not expecting to find survivors in a tragic crash involving an American Airlines plane and a helicopter near Washington D.C.

Last night (29 January), a PSA Airlines jet – operating as American Airlines 5432 – carrying 64 people collided with a US Army helicopter, which was carrying three soldiers.

The plane had been due to land at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport near D.C when the tragic incident occurred, resulting in both aircrafts crashing into the Potomac River.

At a press conference today (30 January), an update was provided on the possibility of recovering people alive, with D.C Fire Chief John Donnelly saying: “We are now at the point where we are switching from a rescue operation to a recovery operation.

“At this point, we don’t believe there are any survivors from this accident.”

He also confirmed that 27 bodies had been recovered from the wreckage of the plane, and one body from the helicopter had been found as part of the ongoing search efforts.

No survivors from the crash are expected and responders are ‘switching from a rescue operation to a recovery operation’ (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

What caused the American Airlines crash?

This is still to be determined, with the black boxes from both the helicopter and plane vital to establishing what was going on in the build up to the fatal collision.

All we know at this stage is that the passenger plane and military helicopter collided as the plane was approaching Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport to land.

How many people were on board the American Airlines flight?

It has been confirmed that 60 passengers and four crew were on American Airlines flight 5342.

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.”

No survivors have also been located at this stage as the investigation and recovery mission continues.

Meanwhile, three people were on board the helicopter.

An American Airlines passenger jet collided with a US Army helicopter on 29 January (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

What has American Airlines said about the crash?

The CEO of American Airlines, Robert Isom, issued a response to the incident in Washington DC as he explained he was travelling to DC with a specialist team to aid the investigation.

In a statement, the businessman 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.”

Donald Trump’s response

President Trump described the incident as a ‘bad situation’ that ‘should have been prevented’.

“The airplane was on a perfect and routine line of approach to the airport,” he wrote on his social media site Truth Social. “The helicopter was going straight at the airplane for an extended period of time. It is a CLEAR NIGHT, the lights on the plane were blazing, why didn’t the helicopter go up or down, or turn.

“Why didn’t the control tower tell the helicopter what to do instead of asking if they saw the plane. This is a bad situation that looks like it should have been prevented. NOT GOOD!!! What a terrible night this has been. God bless you all!”

Dispatcher audio of aftermath of American Airlines crash released

Air traffic control audio has since been released from the incident, detailing the harrowing moment dispatchers witness the crash.

“The accident happened in the river. Both the helicopter and the plane crashed in the river,” a man on the audio says.

“It was probably out in the middle of the river. Um, I just saw a fireball and then it was just gone. I haven’t seen anything since they hit the river.

“But it was a CR-J [the type of plane] and a helicopter that hit, I would say a half-mile of the approach.”

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.”

The mystery of a plane which disappeared over 50 years ago appears to have been solved after a new search turned up the answer.

On 27 January, 1971 a private plane took off from Burlington Airport, Vermont and was headed for Rhode Island and contact was lost with the aircraft shortly afterwards.

There were five people on board the plane, two crew members and three development company employees, who vanished along with their plane.

Extensive efforts to find the five were made, but no wreckage could be found and searching Lake Champlain which sat adjacent to Burlington was difficult as it froze over just days after the aircraft went missing.

Several searches were made of the lake, which is 400ft deep at its lowest point, but now it seems as though the wreckage of the plane has finally been discovered.

This plane went missing in 1971 with five people on board. (NBC Boston)

According to CBS a team using remotely operated vehicles finally found some wreckage of a plane which bore the same design as the missing aircraft.

The discovery was made close to where contact had been lost with the plane, and search leader Garry Kozak said he was pretty sure it was the same plane that had gone missing 53 years ago.

He said he was ’99 percent absolutely sure’ that he and his team had found the missing plane and solved the mystery, and he hopes that this might help provide ‘some closure and answers a lot of the questions they had’ to the families of the five people who died.

He explained that searching for planes underwater was very difficult because they break up into so many pieces that identifying them among everything else beneath the surface of the water was tricky.

Kozak told WCAX-TV: “A jet, it looks like a pile of rocks, literally. So, to most people looking at sonar data, they can overlook it because they’ll go, ‘Oh, that looks like geology’.”

The wreckage was found at the bottom of Lake Champlain, near the airport where the plane took off and close to where contact was lost with it. (Marli Miller/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

It seems as though the discovery has gone some way in soothing the sorrows of those who were related to the five people who died in the plane’s disappearance.

Barbara Nikita, niece of pilot George Nikita, told Associated Press that the plane’s discovery was ‘a peaceful feeling’ but also ‘a very sad feeling’.

Frank Wilder, whose father of the same name was on board the plane, said: “Spending 53 years not knowing if the plane was in the lake or maybe on a mountainside around there somewhere was distressing.

“And again, I’m feeling relieved that I know where the plane is now but unfortunately it’s opening other questions and we have to work on those now.”

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.