D.C. plane crash live updates: All 3 black boxes found, 67 dead after American Airlines jet collides with military helicopter

Two aviation experts interviewed by Vox News — University of North Dakota's Daniel Adjekum and University of Nevada, Las Vegas's Dan Bubb — agreed that, despite a string of recent crashes, travelers should consider air travel to be safe.

But they also agreed that the pressures on the aviation system have continued to grow in recent years.

During a Friday afternoon press briefing, NTSB member J. Todd Inman told reporters that he was confident that investigators would be able to recover the contents of two black boxes from American Airlines Flight 5342 and a third found in the wreckage of an Army Black Hawk helicopter that crashed into the plane.

One of the two black boxes from the plane was a flight data recorder, Inman said, adding "That was actually in what we consider good condition."

"We have a high level of confidence that we will be able to get a full download in the very near future," Inman continued.

The voice recorder that was located in the cockpit "had water intrusion," Inman said. "That is not uncommon. It is not an unusual event for us to receive a recorder with water intrusion."

NTSB soaked both of the plane's recorders in ionized water overnight and the cockpit voice recorder was placed in a "vacuum oven in order to extract moisture," but Inman reiterated that investigators were confident they would be able to recover information from them.

After being located Friday, the Black Hawk's "combined cockpit voice recorder and digital flight data recorder" is also "safely at NTSB headquarters," Inman said, adding that investigators saw "no exterior damage that would indicate that it was compromised."

In the wake of Wednesday's crash, the Federal Aviation Administration began restricting helicopters on Friday from flying specific river routes around Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a social media post that the move "will immediately help secure the airspace near Reagan Airport, ensuring the safety of airplane and helicopter traffic."

The U.S. Department of Transportation said the restriction does not include "helicopters entering this airspace for lifesaving medical support, active law enforcement, active air defense, or presidential transport helicopter missions that must operate in this restricted area."

The DOT also said "these restrictions will remain in place until the NTSB completes its preliminary investigation of the air carrier incident at which point it will be reviewed based on NTSB’s report."

Two new video clips of Wednesday night's crash involving an American Airlines jet and a U.S. military helicopter offer a clearer picture of the tragic collision that killed 67 people.

The footage appears to show American Airlines Flight 5342 on its descent into Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Washington as an Army Black Hawk helicopter travels straight into it, causing a massive explosion over the Potomac River. The footage was obtained by CNN and verified by NBC News.

A press briefing from the National Transportation Safety Board originally scheduled to begin at 4 p.m. ET has been pushed back to 5:30 p.m. ET, the agency said.

Speaking to reporters in Estonia on Friday, International Skating Union president Jae Youl Kim said that figure skaters, coaches and family members killed in the American Airlines jet crash will be honored at the the ISU World Figure Skating Championships in Boston in late March.

“At the moment we want to focus on mourning those who lost their lives and also provide support for the ones who lost their loved ones," he said. "We will discuss with our counterparts in Boston what should be done to honor those who left us in this tragic way. One way to honor them is to make sure that we provide the greatest event, to show the respect.”

Kim made the announcement during the European championships in Tallinn, Estoniawhere several skaters have dedicated their programs to the crash victims.

"We are all saddened," Kim said. "But this is also just bringing the solidarity of the figure skating community together."

The U.S. Army has publicly identified two of the three soldiers who were aboard the Black Hawk helicopter that collided with an American Airlines commercial jet Wednesday night.

• Staff Sgt. Ryan Austin O’Hara, 28, of Lilburn, Ga.:

• Chief Warrant Officer 2 Andrew Loyd Eaves, 39, of Great Mills, Md.:

O’Hara is "believed to be deceased pending positive identification," the Army said in a news release. His family, however, confirmed the soldier's death. Eaves's remains have not yet been recovered.

"At the request of the family, the name of the third Soldier will not be released at this time," the Army said, adding that their remains have also not yet been recovered.

The union that represents the nation's air traffic controllers refuted President Trump's suggestion that diversity, equity and inclusion hiring policies at the Federal Aviation Administration had been a factor in Wednesday night's crash near Reagan National Airport.

"Air traffic controllers earn the prestigious and elite status of being a fully certified professional controller after successfully completing a series of rigorous training milestones," Nick Daniels, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, said in a statement on Friday. "The standards to achieve certification are not based on race or gender."

During Trump's first term as president, the same hiring practices remained in place as those during the Obama administration. And they also did not alter the rigorous medical evaluations and training that prospective air traffic controllers undergo before being certified.

Disability employment law requires "that the person with a disability must be able to perform the essential functions of the job," Chai Feldblum, a disability lawyer and former commissioner of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, told NPR.

Terry Liercke, vice president and manager of Reagan National Airport, told reporters on Friday that the airport is operating at a reduced capacity as two of its three runways are closed due to the proximity to the site of recovery operations.

He said he anticipated that the two runways would be closed for about a week.

At a press briefing in Washington, D.C., on Friday afternoon, D.C. Fire Chief John Donnelly said that search crews recovered 41 bodies from the Potomac River.

Of those, 28 have been positively identified, Donnelly said. As of 6 a.m., next-of-kin notifications had been made to 18 families.

He said that recovery efforts are ongoing, and that dive teams are working in "targeted areas" to locate the rest of the 67 victims killed in Wednesday's midair collision.

Two U.S. Coast Guard cutters have joined the recovery efforts, Donnelly said, with more on the way.

Efforts to salvage the aircraft from the water, he said, would begin no later than Saturday afternoon.

Officials from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) will hold a media briefing at 4 p.m. ET on its investigation into the deadly midair collision between the American Airlines commercial jet and U.S. military helicopter. The briefing will be held in the lobby of Terminal 1 at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

Late Thursday, the NTSB said that investigators had recovered the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder — also known as the "black boxes" — from the Bombardier CRJ700 airplane, and that the recorders were transported to NTSB labs for evaluation.

The father of a 29-year-old U.S. Army Black Hawk pilot who was killed in Wednesday's midair collision with an American Airlines jet told CBS News Friday that his son, Ryan O'Hara, loved flying over Washington, D.C., and never expressed concerns about its congested airspace.

Gary O'Hara said Ryan was assigned to Fort Belvoir in Virginia and lived in the Washington, D.C., area with his wife and 1-year-old son.

"I was worried when he was in Afghanistan," Gary O'Hara said. "You let your guard down … when he's on American soil."

When news of the collision broke Wednesday night, Gary O'Hara, who lives in Georgia, said his "heart just broke." He tried immediately to text his son, but the message wouldn't go through. He then spoke with his daughter-in-law, who was also fearing the worst.

The next morning, they were notified by the Army that Ryan was among the crew of three aboard the helicopter.

"It's really like your worst nightmare," Gary O'Hara said.

A boater who routinely patrols the Potomac River for an environmental group told the Associated Press that he found floating debris that appeared to be from the plane about 2 miles away from the crash site in shallow coves along the Maryland shore.

Dean Naujoks, a riverkeeper for the environmental group Waterkeeper Alliance, said he recovered a piece of the interior wall, pages from a flight manual, a woman’s sweater and what appeared to be the cushion from a pilot’s seat, and turned the items — which were covered in jet fuel — over to the FBI.

“I’m thinking of the people these things belonged to and it’s a punch to the gut," Naujoks said. "It’s just a sad day on the river.”

American Airlines will retire the flight number 5342 following Wednesday's deadly crash, ABC News reports, which is common protocol in the wake of major aviation accidents.

Flight 5342, which was operated by American Airlines subsidiary PSA Airlines, was en route to Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C., from Wichita, Kan., when it collided with a military helicopter on Wednesday night and plunged into the Potomac River. All 67 people aboard the plane and helicopter were killed.

According to the American Airlines website, the nonstop ICT (Wichita's Eisenhower National Airport) to DCA (D.C.'s Reagan National) flight scheduled for Friday and Sunday evenings is listed as Flight 5677.

All 67 people who were aboard the American Airlines plane and Army helicopter are believed to be dead, officials have said.

Neither American Airlines nor U.S. aviation authorities have released an official list of the passengers and crew aboard the commercial flight, which originated in Wichita, Kan. But a number of them have been identified in media reports and by loved ones as figure skaters, their coaches and family members, who were returning from a development camp and the U.S. Figure Skating Championships that happened last week in Wichita.

Here are some of the passengers who have been identified so far.

Spencer Lane and his mom, Christine

“Spencer, in the best way possible, was a crazy kid,” Skating Club of Boston CEO Doug Zeghibe said. “Highly talented, like incredibly talented. Has not been skating very long and rocketed to the top of the sport. Very fun, very cerebral, a good thinker.”

Coach Inna Volyanskaya

Before becoming a coach 15 years ago, Volyanskaya was a skater who represented the Soviet Union at competitions in the 1980s.

Volyanskaya’s ex-husband and fellow skating coach Ross Lansel told News 4 Northern Virginia that Volyanskaya was “one of the best skaters I’ve ever seen.”

“Just knowing the impact she made to all the skaters and everyone just hurts my soul," he said. “I know it’s going to be so hard without her."

Flight attendant Ian Epstein

Epstein’s wife, Debi, shared the news “with a very heavy heart and extreme sadness” on Facebook Thursday morning.

“Ian Epstein was one of the flight attendants on American Airlines Flight 5342,” she wrote. “Please pray for Ian and our family as we travel to DC.”

Click here to read more from Yahoo News about the identified victims.

The Federal Aviation Administration has indefinitely closed some routes used by helicopters near Reagan National Airport, the Associated Press reports, following this week's deadly midair collision between an American Airlines jet and a military helicopter.

"Some of the airspace has already been restricted due to ongoing search and recovery efforts over the crash site, but now the agency responsible for air traffic control is indefinitely barring most helicopters from using the low-to-the-ground routes that run under or parallel to the airport’s flight paths," the AP report said, citing an unnamed official briefed on the matter.

Similarly, an FAA official on Friday told Reuters that the agency was "barring most helicopters from parts of two helicopter routes near the airport and only allowing police and medical helicopters in the area between the airport and nearby bridges."

The deadly collision between an American Airlines jet and a military helicopter outside Washington, D.C., on Wednesday night has put a spotlight on the airspace around Reagan National Airport.

And a Reuters review of incidents involving helicopters at Reagan airport reveals pilots had been raising alarm about near misses for decades.

"Out of 46 incidents flagged anonymously by pilots in the Aviation Safety Reporting System database, 26 cases involved near misses or recklessly close contact" with helicopters, Reuters reported. "One pilot complained it was his seventh near miss with a helicopter in 4 1/2 years flying into the airport."

Read more from Reuters: Near misses at Washington airport worried pilots well before fatal crash

Scott Hamilton teared up on NBC's Today show on Friday while reflecting on the figure skaters, coaches and family members who were killed in Wednesday's tragedy.

"It’s been overwhelming," said Hamilton, the 1984 Olympic gold medalist figure skater turned TV commentator. "It’s beyond the skating community. So many people see this tragedy and the loss of these brilliant young skaters that have poured their lives into building an identity in our sport."

Hamilton said he had just come from the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Wichita, Kan., where he had seen many of the skaters and coaches who were on the ill-fated flight.

"I can’t wrap my head around the last 36 hours," Hamilton said. "It’s just been devastating. The loss is just beyond description, and my heart is shattered."

Search-team divers who have been working to recover bodies from the Potomac River after the deadly midair collision between an American Airlines jet and military helicopter will assist the National Transportation Safety Board's investigation Friday by conducting "additional searches to locate aircraft components" and "begin operations to salvage the aircraft," Washington, D.C.'s fire department said in a post on X.

The plane's two black boxes — the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder — have already been recovered, the NTSB said.

Appearing on Fox News on Friday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said authorities were still looking for the helicopter's black box recorder.

More than 40 bodies have now been recovered from the Potomac River, the Associated Press reported on Friday morning, citing a law enforcement official.

The American Airlines jet was carrying 60 passengers and four crew members when it collided with an Army helicopter with a crew of three while approaching Washington’s Reagan National Airport Wednesday night.

There were no survivors.

Investigators continue to probe Wednesday night's fatal crash between American Airlines Flight 5342 and an Army Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C., while search teams scour the Potomac River for remains. The aviation disaster claimed the lives of 67 people, making it one of the deadliest plane crashes in U.S. history.

Here's the latest:

• At least 28 bodies have been recovered from the Potomac River.

• Two black box data recorders aboard the plane have been recovered, the National Transportation Safety Board said.

• A preliminary report by the Federal Aviation Administration reportedly found that staffing in the air traffic control tower at the airport was "not normal" at the time of the midair collision.

• Residents of Wichita, Kan., where Flight 5342 originated, held a prayer vigil to remember those killed.

• More than a dozen figure skaters were killed in the crash, many of whom had attended the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Wichita last week.

The military helicopter that collided with an American Airlines jet near Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C., "appears to have been flying too high and outside its approved flight path at the time of the crash," the New York Times reported Thursday night, citing four people briefed on the matter.

The paper said that the Black Hawk helicopter "was above 300 feet, not below 200 feet, and was at least a half-mile off the approved route when it collided with the jet."

A military official who spoke with the Times cautioned against making any final assessments until the helicopter's black box could be recovered and analyzed.

In a post on Truth Social Friday morning, President Trump said, "The Blackhawk helicopter was flying too high, by a lot. It was far above the 200 foot limit. That’s not really too complicated to understand, is it???"

The National Transportation Safety Board said late Thursday that investigators have recovered the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder — also known as the black boxes — from the Bombardier CRJ700 that collided in midair with an Army helicopter. The agency said that the recorders are at the NTSB labs for evaluation.

What are black boxes?

According to the NTSB, the cockpit voice recorder records radio transmissions and sounds in the cockpit, including pilot voices and engine noise. The flight data recorder monitors parameters such as altitude, airspeed and heading.

The Federal Aviation Administration requires all commercial aircraft and some smaller commercial, corporate and private aircraft to be equipped with these black boxes.

According to the NTSB, both recorders are installed in the part of the aircraft that's most likely to survive a crash, "usually the tail section."

One of two black boxes aboard American Airlines Flight 5342 was recovered on Thursday, Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell’s office told CNN.

Assuming their contents are undamaged, the plane's black boxes could help investigators pinpoint the cause of Wednesday night's deadly collision with a Black Hawk helicopter.

Twenty-four hours before Wednesday's deadly crash between an American Airlines passenger jet and an Army Black Hawk helicopter, a near miss between another helicopter and a commercial plane transpired, the Washington Post reported.

As Republic Airlines Flight 4514 approached Reagan National Airport just after 8:00 p.m. ET on Tuesday, the plane's cockpit crew alerted the control tower that a helicopter had appeared near its flight path.

“We had an RA with a helicopter traffic below us,” a crew member told air traffic controllers at roughly 8:05 p.m., the Post reported, using the abbreviation for a resolution advisory, which pilots use to indicate their plane is at risk of colliding with another aircraft.

Flight 4514 aborted its initial attempt at landing, making a loop and successfully touching down at 8:16 p.m., according to flight records obtained by the Post.

Updating her statement issued earlier in the day, Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) superintendent Michelle Reid said Thursday evening that three students and six parents from FCPS "were lost" in Wednesday night's plane crash at Reagan National Airport.

“What we know at this time is that three of our FCPS students and six of our FCPS parents were lost, affecting multiple schools and departments here at FCPS,” Reid said, adding that two of the parents killed were current or former school staff members.

At a Thursday press conference, Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly said that the National Transportation Safety Board would likely make the manifest for American Airlines Flight 5342 available by Friday afternoon.

The NTSB has not yet identified the identities of the passengers, all of whom are believed to have died in Wednesday night's crash with a Black Hawk helicopter at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, because it is still in the process of notifying the families of those presumed killed.

“There are some folks who were on that plane who were from overseas and so that’s partially the reason for the delay,” Kelly said.

Last May, Congress voted to add five new long-distance round-trip flights to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport as part of an extensive bill authorizing $105 billion to the Federal Aviation Administration.

But months earlier, in February 2024, four Democratic senators from Maryland and Virginia, including Sen. Tim Kaine, issued a statement warning that air traffic at Reagan was already congested and that allowing that many additional incoming and outgoing flights would be "reckless" and "gambling with the safety of everyone who uses this airport."

In December, the Department of Transportation announced that it had awarded five airlines slots to fly passengers from Reagan to select western destinations, from San Antonio to Seattle.

Wichita Mayor Lily Wu and Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly held a news conference Thursday afternoon to give updates on Wednesday night's plane crash. American Airlines Flight 5342 had taken off from Wichita, Kan., before colliding with a helicopter near a runway at Washington's Ronald Reagan National Airport.

"I'm proud that this community is coming together in a time like this," Wu said at her second press conference of the day. "A tragic event that should unite us all to remember that life is precious."

Gov. Kelly said that Kansas officials were in communication with federal partners to investigate what caused the plane collision.

"Both the mayor and I have been on the phone constantly since last night with representatives from the National Transportation Safety Board, from the governors of Virginia and Maryland and all sorts of other folks who are involved in this tragedy," Kelly said.

Wednesday night’s fatal crash at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport involving a commercial airplane and a Black Hawk military helicopter has drawn renewed attention to air traffic controllers and what role they may have played in the accident that is believed to have killed 67 people.

The disaster, the cause of which remains under investigation, comes during a long-running nationwide shortage of air traffic controllers, and staffing may have played a factor. The control tower at Reagan Airport has been understaffed for years, the New York Times reported, and at the time of the crash, a controller who was in charge of helicopter traffic was also tasked with instructing planes, the Associated Press reported. Ideally, those jobs are handled by two controllers.

Read more from Yahoo News.

American Airlines CEO Robert Isom sent a letter to employees on Thursday that the airline's top priority was supporting the families of the passengers lost in Wednesday night's "heartbreaking accident."

"Right now, the strength of the entire airline is focused on taking care of the families and loved ones of those on board," Isom said.

"I’m on the ground in D.C. along with members of our GO Team, and we are deploying all of our resources to make sure we do everything we can to take care of the needs of the families and loved ones of our passengers and crew members," Isom said in the letter. "That is our priority."

He also thanked first responders who continued recovery efforts.

Locals in Wichita, Kan., came together Thursday afternoon for a public prayer vigil at city hall to remember the victims of the deadly collision between an American Airlines jet that took off from Wichita and collided with an Army helicopter on its descent into Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C.

"Tragedies like this remind us that we are one community; whether a Wichitan, a Kansan or an American," Wichita Mayor Lily Wu said Thursday. "We are one community and in times of struggle, we do come together in grief and sadness to lift one another."

A preliminary report from the Federal Aviation Administration obtained by multiple news outlets said that staffing in the air traffic control tower at Reagan National Airport was "not normal" at the time of the midair collision on Wednesday.

According to the Associated Press, one air traffic controller was working two positions at the time of the crash.

The New York Times reported that the controller was managing both helicopters and planes in the vicinity.

“The position configuration was not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic,” the FAA stated.

The father of one of the two pilots on board the plane that collided with the military helicopter told Fox 5 in Atlanta that he is grieving the death of his 28-year-old son, Sam Lilley.

"This is undoubtedly the worst day of my life," Timothy Lilley said.

Sam Lilley, of Savannah, Ga., was engaged and planned to get married in the fall, his father said.

Timothy Lilley described himself as a longtime former Army helicopter pilot who is familiar with the air traffic in the Washington, D.C., area.

"I was a helicopter pilot in the Army for 20 years. In the '90s, I used to fly in and out of the Pentagon regularly, and I can tell you if you are flying on the route over the Potomac and wearing night vision goggles, it's going to be very hard to see that plane. If you're not wearing the goggles, then you might have a chance," he said.

Investigators have yet to determine what caused the deadly collision. U.S. officials said that the helicopter was on a routine nighttime training mission and that the crew was equipped with night vision goggles, but it's unclear whether they were using them at the time of the incident.

“From what I can see, those guys turned right into the jet," Timothy Lilley said. "I think the PSA jet was doing everything right. The Army pilot made a grave error. It hurts me because those are my brothers, and now my son is dead.”

At the press briefing, National Transportation Safety Board member J. Todd Inman said it is too soon to say what caused the deadly mid-air collision between the commercial jet and military helicopter.

Inman said that the NTSB investigative team will be on scene "as long as it takes" to determine "not just what happened, but why it happened, and to recommend changes to prevent it from happening again."

"We will not be determining the probable cause of the accident while we are here on scene," he said. "Nor will we speculate about what may have caused this accident."

The NTSB hopes to release a preliminary report on the crash within 30 days, Inman said.

During a Q&A with reporters, Inman said investigators have not ruled out human error or mechanical failure as a possible cause.

"We don't know enough facts yet to be able to rule in or out either," he said.

The flight data recorders from the American Airlines jet and Army helicopter that collided Wednesday evening have not been recovered yet, the National Transportation Safety Board said Thursday.

"We know they're there. They are underwater," Jennifer Homendy, chairwoman of the NTSB, told reporters. "This is not unusual for the NTSB. We have many times recovered flight data recorders in water. We have our lab right here that's about a mile from the NTSB."

Captain Chelsey "Sully" Sullenberger, who safely landed a passenger plane in the Hudson River in 2009, told the New York Times that Wednesday night's crash happened during an "exceptionally safe" period in aviation history but is a reminder of "how vigilant we have to be."

Before Wednesday, there hadn't been a fatal commercial plane crash in the U.S. in nearly 16 years.

“We’ve had to learn important lessons literally with blood too often, and we had finally gotten beyond that, to where we could learn from incidents, and not accidents,” Sullenberger said.

The retired pilot and aviation expert also said Reagan National Airport, the destination of the American Airlines plane that collided with the Army helicopter, was built in the 1930's and is one of the nation's most challenging airports to navigate.

“It hasn’t changed much since then,” Sullenberger said of the airport. “Of course, we’ve added technology to it. But a lot of the technology is old.”

Wednesday night's tragic collision involving an American Airlines jet and Army helicopter over the Potomac River near Reagan National Airport highlighted issues of congested airspace in Washington, D.C.

The area has multiple military bases and three major airports, meaning military aircraft and passenger airplanes share the same airspace. Last year there were two near-miss incidents at Reagan National Airport that caused alarm involving civilian aircraft and coincided with a shortage of air traffic controllers.

Reuters reports:

Read more from Reuters: Washington, D.C. airspace challenges highlighted by passenger jet and Army helicopter collision

Members of the international skating community have been paying tribute Thursday to the victims of the fatal collision on Wednesday night between an Army helicopter and an American Airlines aircraft, which had reportedly been carrying several U.S. and Russian figure skaters along with their coaches and family members.

Two-time figure skating Olympic medalist Nancy Kerrigan spoke to the media on Thursday: "I feel for the athletes, the skaters and their families," she said, "but anyone that was on that plane, not just the skaters because it's just such a tragic event. ... Tell people around you that you love them because you just never know."

Former Olympic silver medalist Ashley Wagner posted a message on her Instagram Story that read: “My heart breaks for my skating family today. I can’t put into words what this feeling is — I’m horrified, heartbroken, devastated and shocked. It makes you realize that ‘my heart goes out to’ and ‘condolences to the families’ simply are not enough.”

Former Olympic gold medalist Tara Lapinski wrote a message on her Instagram Story that accompanied a screenshot of a news headline about the tragic crash. "It’s unimaginable the loss," she wrote. "We will mourn their loss and ALWAYS remember them. My heart is with all the families affected — that part I have no words for. “Strength” and “love” won’t do it justice. So many of our own were on this tragic flight and my heart aches, for them and for everyone part of this devastating accident.”

Witnesses in the vicinity of the crash have been describing to various news outlets what they saw and heard.

Ari Schulman, of Alexandria, Va., told CNN that he was driving home along a highway near Reagan National Airport looking at the line of planes coming in when he "saw sparks flying" on the underside of a plane.

"I believe what I saw was the collision," Schulman said. "It looked like a Roman candle."

Courtney Cain told the Washington Post she was at home at Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling when she heard a bang outside. She looked out her window and saw a flash and immediately feared it might have been a plane crash. Those fears were soon realized when she saw news of the crash on television. “I’m honestly still shaking,” Cain said.

Another witness, Abadi Ismail, told Reuters that he was getting ready to go to bed at his home in south Washington, D.C., when he heard a loud bang. He said it was "a very unusual sound, something you don't hear on a daily basis.

"It's more like in a war zone, something you hear on the movies, action," Ismail said. "So that caught my attention. I looked at the sky, I looked out the window, and all I could see at that moment was just smoke from the south side of Reagan Airport."

U.S. figure skater Spencer Lane, 16, was on board the American Airlines jet that collided with an Army helicopter. Spencer shared a photo aboard the jet on the runway to his Instagram Story before it took off on Wednesday.

The post read "ICT -> DCA," which are the airport codes to indicate he was traveling from Wichita Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport, in Kansas, to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, in Washington, D.C.

The six members of Kansas's congressional delegation — including four House members and two senators — released a joint statement mourning those killed in the crash:

As the skating world mourns athletes who died in a midair collision aboard an American Airlines airplane late Wednesday, the second day of the European figure skating championships continued as scheduled in Estonia on Thursday.

The International Skating Union, which is the event's governing body, released a statement, saying, "Our thoughts are with everyone affected by this tragedy. Figure skating is more than a sport—it’s a close-knit family—and we stand together."

Air traffic control recordings reveal that controllers at Reagan Washington National Airport reached out to the Army Black Hawk helicopter asking if the crew saw the American Airlines plane.

LiveATC.net, which posts live air traffic communication from U.S. airports, shared multiple calls from around the D.C. airport on Wednesday night. The Associated Press collected and uploaded the calls specific to the crash.

"PAT-25, do you have the CRJ in sight?" an air traffic controller asks. "PAT-25, pass behind the CRJ."

Seconds later, the helicopter and the American Airlines plane collided, and another aircraft called in to the control tower, asking, "Tower, did you see that?"

Two school districts in northern Virginia released statements Thursday to families, students and staff mourning the deaths of former students killed in Wednesday night's crash.

Michelle C. Reid, superintendent of Fairfax County Public Schools, said in a statement that it was a "time we must hold one another a bit closer."

The Loudon County School District superintendent, Aaron Spence, also released a statement Thursday.

Spence noted that "mental health professionals are available to provide guidance and support" to students and families.

Wednesday's plane collision, which officials said killed more than a dozen figure skaters, coaches and family members, has resurfaced memories of another devastating plane crash for the U.S. ice skating community that happened 64 years ago.

On Feb. 15, 1961, the entire U.S. figure skating team died in a plane crash in Belgium while traveling to the 1961 World Figuring Skating Championships in Prague. Out of the 72 passengers who died in the crash, 18 of them were skaters and 16 were family members, ice skating coaches, judges and officials. One of the victims, 16-year-old Laurence Owen, had just been on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

Shortly after the crash, the U.S. Figure Skating Memorial Fund was established. It aims to give skating and academic scholarships to figure skaters across the country.

The 1961 crash was considered the worst air disaster involving a U.S. sports team until November 1970, when 37 players on the Marshall University football team were killed in a plane crash in West Virginia.

First responders on Thursday were searching the Potomac River following the midair collision between an American Airlines plane and an Army Black Hawk helicopter.

As of Thursday morning, 28 bodies were recovered from the scene, according to John Donnelly, Washington's Fire and EMS chief. He said first responders were "switching from a rescue operation to a recovery operation."

While mourning the victims of the midair collision at the White House, President Trump, without evidence, sought to blame the previous administration's hiring policies surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion for the deadly crash.

Trump lashed out at a longstanding Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) policy to prioritize diversity in hiring staffers, including air traffic controllers.

"They put a big push to put diversity into the FAA’s program,” Trump said. “Brilliant people have to be in those positions, and their lives are actually shortened, very substantially shortened because of the stress where you have many, many planes coming into one target, and you need a very special talent and a very special genius to be able to do it.”

But when pressed for evidence that diversity hiring was to blame for the tragedy, Trump said he did not have any.

"It just could have been," the president said, later adding: "I have common sense, OK? And unfortunately a lot of people don't."

Trump also said the helicopter pilot may have been at fault but did not offer specific evidence for his claim.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that the Black Hawk helicopter involved in last night's crash was conducting a routine training mission but that "a mistake was made" during the training.

"No excuses, we're going to get to the bottom of this," he told reporters at the White House on Thursday morning.

On board the Black Hawk was a captain, a staff sergeant and a chief warrant officer. All three were undergoing an annual night flight training when "there was some sort of an elevation issue," Hegseth said.

"We have immediately begun investigating at the [Department of Defense] and Army level," he said.