Latest news with #AAFlight5342
NBC Sports
28-03-2025
- Entertainment
- NBC Sports
Efimova/Mitrofanov get standing ovation after free
Paying tribute to the victims of AA Flight 5342 during the competition, Alisa Efimova and Misha Mitrofanov delivered an emotional performance in the pairs free skate, leading to a standing ovation and sixth-place finish.
Fox News
31-01-2025
- General
- Fox News
DC plane crash: Potomac River divers' search for bodies complicated by conditions out of their control
As recovery efforts on the Potomac River continue after a midair collision between an Army helicopter and an American Airlines plane on Wednesday night, a Virginia rescue diver and firefighter shed light on the challenges divers may be facing in the frigid waters. A total of 64 people, including passengers and flight crew members, were aboard AA Flight 5342 from Wichita to Reagan National Airport (DCA). Three soldiers were conducting a training operation on the Army Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk that came from Fort Belvoir in Virginia. All 67 people onboard both aircraft are presumed dead. As of Friday afternoon, authorities said they had recovered 41 sets of remains and identified 28 of those victims. "This is incredibly unusual. You know, we're trained and always ready to answer the call…when the dive call comes in. But that's typically involving one victim. And in rare occasions, a couple of victims," Jake Crockett, a firefighter and diver with the Scuba Rescue Team of Chesterfield Fire & EMS, told Fox News Digital. "But something of this magnitude, you know, having 67 people to account for, along with two aircraft and all the debris is just it's incredibly out of the ordinary. It's something that, no doubt, none of them nor myself could have predicted." Crockett believes the recovery mission could last weeks, yet he is hopeful that all the victims will be accounted for in the next several days. "Obviously, they're making really good progress in a short amount of time. But I'm sure that recovery of the victims should be the number one priority… providing closure to these families that have lost their loved ones should be the most important thing," Crockett said. "Once that is completed, then recovering the two aircraft and then also finding as much of the debris from the collision that they can in the river," he added. "That is what is probably going to take the longest…they're going to be looking for every single piece, every nut and bolt that they possibly can for the investigation." Crockett said divers are likely to face a multitude of challenges in the Potomac River, with the largest being water visibility. "It's going to be zero visibility or close to zero is that they'll be diving in, and so looking for small parts of an aircraft in that kind of visibility is going to be extremely challenging…the waters here and the lakes and ponds and rivers…when you go in, it's just dark," he said. "You rely 100% on touch and in your training, you fall back on your training of doing accurate search patterns, so that you don't miss anything. You're just touching everything that you can get your hands on and feeling it and trying to identify it." Without the ability to see in such a large body of water, Crockett explained that certain technology like sonar can help divers detect large objects underwater but added that there are limitations involved. "At the end of the day, all the technology, it just gives you somewhere to look," he said. "Someone will have to go down there to still recover, to still verify that this is something related." Crockett noted that the river's temperature may also be an obstacle for divers during the recovery mission. "The water temperature especially is just above freezing, which is, you know, it would be absolutely unbearable to jump in without, you know, without the appropriate diving suits," he said. "Even with appropriate PPE, you can only stay in that water for so long before you start to lose dexterity in your hands, which would impact your searching." Crockett said there's "no telling" how far remains from the wreckage may reach. "The Potomac is, is massive, you know, from where they are, it goes hundreds of miles all the way out to the Chesapeake Bay," he said. "It's a river, so it has a current…that's another factor for the divers getting in." Crockett explained that the river's current may be a significant factor for several reasons, including divers needing to fight the current and feeling "fatigue" as a result, and the flow of water potentially moving around victims' remains and wreckage debris. "They've got a really big job ahead of them, which is why I think this is going to be weeks-long, because in order to be thorough, they're going to be up and down that river for miles looking," he said. What originally began as a search and rescue effort Wednesday turned to a recovery mission once officials believed there were no survivors. "Once it's turned over to a recovery mission…our goal is to provide that closure," Crockett said, adding that the victims' families "need to be able to properly bury their loved one and grieve and mourn in an appropriate way." Crockett added that if his team were called upon to aid in the recovery efforts, they would be prepared for the challenge. "The first responder family is massive and everyone's always willing," he said.
Yahoo
31-01-2025
- General
- Yahoo
DC plane crash: Military aircraft collisions raise questions about training and equipment, expert says
U.S. military helicopter crashes like the one that took down a commercial American Airlines flight over the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday night are very rare, but there has been an uptick in these incidents in recent years, according to military statistics and an aviation expert. A total of 64 people, including passengers and flight crew members, were aboard AA Flight 5342 from Wichita to Reagan National Airport (DCA). Three soldiers were conducting a training operation on the Army Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk that came from Fort Belvoir in Virginia. "It's concerning, certainly, the number of incidents that there have been," Timothy Loranger, an aviation attorney at Wisner Baum and a Marine Corps veteran, told Fox News Digital. "But if you compare it to the thousands and thousands of hours of flights that occur without any incident … that's all very good." The collision has sparked questions about how such a devastating accident could happen in one of the most tightly controlled airspaces in the country and the world. The last significant fatal commercial crash happened in 2009, when a Continental Airlines flight crashed into a house in Buffalo, New York, killing 49 people. Dc Plane Crash Timeline: Midair Collision Involves 67 Passengers, Crew Members, Soldiers "Is there something that we can point to? Training? Is the budget of the military sufficient to make sure that pilots and the crew have enough training and experience in order to fly those aircraft?" Loranger said. "Those are the kinds of questions that have to be asked. If it's a problem with the aircraft itself, a mechanical issue, what is that? Is it a design issue? Is it a manufacturing issue? Is it a maintenance issue?" Read On The Fox News App Military helicopter crashes, while uncommon, have been occurring more frequently over the last year, according to Army data. American Airlines Plane, Army Helicopter Collide Outside Reagan National Airport Near Washington Dc Fiscal year 2024 had the most severe aviation incidents that resulted in fatalities since fiscal year 2014 and the worst rate of deaths and severe injuries from incidents per 100,000 hours since fiscal year 2007, according to Army statistics. Fox News counted at least 10 deaths from U.S. military helicopter crashes alone in 2024, including five Marines in the same aircraft, and multiple others injured. Since 2012, there have been 21 Black Hawk crash deaths. Dc Plane Crash Air Traffic Control Audio Reveals Moment Controllers Saw Disaster: 'Tower Did You See That?' Loranger called the uptick in military helicopter deaths last year "concerning." WATCH: VIDEO SHOWS MIDAIR PLANE CRASH Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told "Fox & Friends" on Friday that officials "will get to the bottom of what happened here." "It's completely unacceptable in our nation's capital or anywhere. The military trains, and it trains robustly. And we're not going to stop training, even though there's a pause on this unit, on this exercise, which is an important one. And we should have that pause until we get to the bottom of this," Hegseth said. "…We have to train safely. Something like this can never happen. And it's completely unacceptable." WATCH: HEGSETH VOWS TO DELIVER ANSWERS The instructor pilot in charge who was flying the Black Hawk on Wednesday for a training operation apparently had 1,000 flying hours, which is considered very experienced, and the co-pilot who was also being evaluated had 500 flying hours, which is considered an average amount of experience, according to a U.S. official who spoke to Fox News. "This is a relatively easy route," an Army chief warrant officer five with decades of experience flying Army helicopters told reporters at the Pentagon on Thursday. The pilot was flying down the center of the river, which is generally dark, likely wearing night vision goggles. Memorial Bridge would have been their last checkpoint. Reagan National Airport Crash: Military Black Hawk Helicopter Collides Midair With American Airlines Jet Military and other government helicopters fly the same route almost daily, the senior Army pilot and warrant officer told reporters. "This should not have been a problem," the official said. Loranger described DCA as "a very complicated airspace, very busy airspace." "There's a lot of airplanes and aircraft flying in and out," he said, adding that planes have systems in place designed to help give information to pilots about pilots or other objects flying nearby to avoid collisions like the one on Wednesday. It might have been difficult for the commercial airplane and the Black Hawk to see each other at night over the river, Loranger said. Staffing at the air control tower at DCA was "not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic," according to an internal preliminary Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) report reviewed by The New York Times. Victims Identified In Dc Plane Crash Involving American Airlines Jet And Military Helicopter The controller who was handling helicopters Wednesday night was also instructing planes that were landing and departing from the airport runways, the Times reported. Those assignments are typically assigned to two controllers. "I don't know exactly how the staffing occurred in that particular air traffic control tower," Hegseth told "Fox & Friends." "It sounds like there was a shortage [of controllers], and the investigation will tell us more about that. But the environment around which we choose pilots or air traffic controllers, as the president pointed out correctly yesterday, better be the highest possible standard — the best of the best who are managing … a flight a minute and managing radio traffic." Fox News Digital has reached out to the FAA. The air control tower at Reagan Airport has been understaffed for years with 19 fully certified controllers as of September 2023. The FFA and controllers' union, however, called for 30 controllers in its staffing targets. Fox News' Jennifer Griffin, Liz Friden and Louis Casiano contributed to this article source: DC plane crash: Military aircraft collisions raise questions about training and equipment, expert says
Fox News
31-01-2025
- General
- Fox News
DC plane crash: Military aircraft collisions raise questions about training and equipment, expert says
U.S. military helicopter crashes like the one that took down a commercial American Airlines flight over the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday night are very rare, but there has been an uptick in these incidents in recent years, according to military statistics and an aviation expert. A total of 64 people, including passengers and flight crew members, were aboard AA Flight 5342 from Wichita to Reagan National Airport (DCA). Three soldiers were conducting a training operation on the Army Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk that came from Fort Belvoir in Virginia. "It's concerning, certainly, the number of incidents that there have been," Timothy Loranger, an aviation attorney at Wisner Baum and a Marine Corps veteran, told Fox News Digital. "But if you compare it to the thousands and thousands of hours of flights that occur without any incident … that's all very good." The collision has sparked questions about how such a devastating accident could happen in one of the most tightly controlled airspaces in the country and the world. The last significant fatal commercial crash happened in 2009, when a Continental Airlines flight crashed into a house in Buffalo, New York, killing 49 people. "Is there something that we can point to? Training? Is the budget of the military sufficient to make sure that pilots and the crew have enough training and experience in order to fly those aircraft?" Loranger said. "Those are the kinds of questions that have to be asked. If it's a problem with the aircraft itself, a mechanical issue, what is that? Is it a design issue? Is it a manufacturing issue? Is it a maintenance issue?" Military helicopter crashes, while uncommon, have been occurring more frequently over the last year, according to Army data. Fiscal year 2024 had the most severe aviation incidents that resulted in fatalities since fiscal year 2014 and the worst rate of deaths and severe injuries from incidents per 100,000 hours since fiscal year 2007, according to Army statistics. Fox News counted at least 10 deaths from U.S. military helicopter crashes alone in 2024, including five Marines in the same aircraft, and multiple others injured. Since 2012, there have been 21 Black Hawk crash deaths. Loranger called the uptick in military helicopter deaths last year "concerning." WATCH: VIDEO SHOWS MIDAIR PLANE CRASH Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told "Fox & Friends" on Friday that officials "will get to the bottom of what happened here." "It's completely unacceptable in our nation's capital or anywhere. The military trains, and it trains robustly. And we're not going to stop training, even though there's a pause on this unit, on this exercise, which is an important one. And we should have that pause until we get to the bottom of this," Hegseth said. "…We have to train safely. Something like this can never happen. And it's completely unacceptable." WATCH: HEGSETH VOWS TO DELIVER ANSWERS The instructor pilot in charge who was flying the Black Hawk on Wednesday for a training operation apparently had 1,000 flying hours, which is considered very experienced, and the co-pilot who was also being evaluated had 500 flying hours, which is considered an average amount of experience, according to a U.S. official who spoke to Fox News. "This is a relatively easy route," an Army chief warrant officer five with decades of experience flying Army helicopters told reporters at the Pentagon on Thursday. The pilot was flying down the center of the river, which is generally dark, likely wearing night vision goggles. Memorial Bridge would have been their last checkpoint. Military and other government helicopters fly the same route almost daily, the senior Army pilot and warrant officer told reporters. "This should not have been a problem," the official said. Loranger described DCA as "a very complicated airspace, very busy airspace." "There's a lot of airplanes and aircraft flying in and out," he said, adding that planes have systems in place designed to help give information to pilots about pilots or other objects flying nearby to avoid collisions like the one on Wednesday. It might have been difficult for the commercial airplane and the Black Hawk to see each other at night over the river, Loranger said. Staffing at the air control tower at DCA was "not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic," according to an internal preliminary Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) report reviewed by The New York Times. The controller who was handling helicopters Wednesday night was also instructing planes that were landing and departing from the airport runways, the Times reported. Those assignments are typically assigned to two controllers. "I don't know exactly how the staffing occurred in that particular air traffic control tower," Hegseth told "Fox & Friends." "It sounds like there was a shortage [of controllers], and the investigation will tell us more about that. But the environment around which we choose pilots or air traffic controllers, as the president pointed out correctly yesterday, better be the highest possible standard — the best of the best who are managing … a flight a minute and managing radio traffic." Fox News Digital has reached out to the FAA. The air control tower at Reagan Airport has been understaffed for years with 19 fully certified controllers as of September 2023. The FFA and controllers' union, however, called for 30 controllers in its staffing targets.
USA Today
31-01-2025
- General
- USA Today
Passenger plane forced to abort landing at DC airport the day before deadly plane crash
Passenger plane forced to abort landing at DC airport the day before deadly plane crash Show Caption Hide Caption Air travelers in DC react to midair collision: 'Anything can happen' Some travelers at Ronald Reagan National Airport expressed nervousness about flying after the midair collision over the Potomac River. Just one day before the deadly crash between an American Airlines flight and a military helicopter near the nation's capital on Wednesday evening, a passenger jet had to abort its initial landing at Reagan National Airport after a chopper appeared in its flight path, airline officials and radar data confirmed. FlightAware, a site that tracks flight paths, shows Republic Airways Flight 4514 − bound for the same airport − departed from Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks, Connecticut on Thursday at 6:50 p.m. ET. The town is in Hartford County, just under 15 miles north of the state's capitol. Upon its first approach, about 7 p.m. ET, the airplane can be seen on radar diverting from its scheduled course, then turning west, circling around, and landing during a second attempt to land at Reagan National Airport. According to an audio recording from air traffic control, the passenger airliner had to make a second approach "after a helicopter appeared near its flight path," Republic Airways Corporate Communication spokesperson Jon Austin confirmed to USA TODAY on Friday. The Washington Post first reported the incident. The mishap came one day before AA Flight 5342 − carrying 60 passengers and four crewmembers − collided with a Black Hawk trying to land at Reagan National Airport. The helicopter had three people on board. All are feared dead, officials said Thursday. 'He died doing what he absolutely loved' Flight attendant death confirmed in crash The cause of the crash remains under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board, which confirmed Thursday that divers had recovered black boxes from the passenger plane. During a news conference, NTSB member Todd Inman said the military helicopter was also equipped "with some form of recording." "We feel comfortable and confident" the chopper boxes would be recovered, Inman told reporters Thursday afternoon. USA TODAY has reached out to the NTSB, the Federal Aviation Administration about Tuesday's reported incident. Who does the helicopter belong to? It was not immediately known whether the chopper belonged to the military, a hospital or was a private aircraft. But the plane reached an altitude of about 1,600 feet during its first descent, FlightAware shows. At the same time, the airline's spokesperson confirmed audio and flight-tracking data showed the helicopter flew about 300 feet from the ground. According to audio from while approaching runway 19, air traffic control warned the jet about a nearby helicopter. Republic Airways Flight 4514's landing delayed by less than 10 minutes FlightAware's log shows the incident caused the flight's landing to be delayed just under 10 minutes. The plane arrived at the gate at 8:16 p.m., according to the online site. No injuries were reported. This is a developing story. Contributing: USA TODAY's Charles Ventura Natalie Neysa Alund is a senior reporter for USA TODAY. Reach her at nalund@ and follow her on X @nataliealund.
