Authorities say they believe there are no survivors. Bodies of 27 passengers from the American Airlines jet and 1 from helicopter have been recovered.
Officials say The American Airlines flight was inbound from Wichita, Kansas.
Passengers on the jet included a group of figure skaters, their coaches and family members who were returning from a development camp held after the national U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Wichita, U.S. Figure Skating said in a statement.
The organization confirmed that “several members of the skating community” were on the flight. It did not provide more details.
“We are devastated by this unspeakable tragedy and hold the victims’ families closely in our hearts,” the organization said. “We will continue to monitor the situation and will release more information as it becomes available.”
Also, the Kremlin has confirmed that Russian figure skaters, as well as other Russian nationals, were on the American Airlines plane.
Spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed to reporters Thursday that Russian figure skaters Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, who won the pairs title at the 1994 world championships and competed at the Winter Olympics twice, were aboard the plane.
The U.S. Army said the helicopter that collided with the passenger jet was a UH-60 Blackhawk based at Fort Belvoir in Virginia. A crew of three soldiers were onboard the helicopter, an Army official said. The helicopter was on a training flight.
Military aircraft frequently conduct training flights in and around the congested and heavily-restricted airspace around the nation’s capital for familiarization and continuity of government planning.
Less than 30 seconds before the crash, an air traffic controller asks the helicopter if it has the arriving plane in sight: “PAT25, do you have the CRJ in sight?”
The controller makes another radio call to PAT25 moments later: “PAT 25 pass behind the CRJ.”
The two aircraft collide seconds later.
The audio from flight tracking sites doesn’t record any response from the helicopter, if any, to the warnings from air traffic control.
The plane’s radio transponder stopped transmitting about 2,400 feet short of the runway, roughly over the middle of the river.
