Airliner and Army Helicopter Collide Over the Potomac River: All 67 Aboard Killed
At about 8:48 p.m. Eastern time on January 29, 2025, over the Potomac River about a half mile southeast of Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Arlington County, Virginia, a passenger jet and a U.S. Army helicopter collided in midair and fell into the river. All 67 people aboard the two aircraft were killed.
The jet was American Airlines flight 5342, a CRJ700 regional jet operated by PSA Airlines. It had departed Wichita Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport in Kansas and was on final approach to Runway 33 at Reagan National, carrying 60 passengers and four crew members.
The helicopter was a U.S. Army UH-60L Black Hawk, callsign PAT25, with three crewmembers aboard. It had departed Davison Army Airfield at Fort Belvoir in Fairfax County, Virginia, on a flight for the pilot's annual standardization evaluation, flown with night-vision goggles.
The collision occurred at about 300 feet. District of Columbia fire and emergency crews mounted a large overnight search as hundreds of responders worked in the cold river. On the morning of January 30, officials said the operation had shifted from rescue to recovery, that they did not believe there were survivors, and that 28 bodies had been recovered at that point.
The Federal Aviation Administration said that night that the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) would investigate, with the NTSB leading. The NTSB sent a go-team to the scene that night. It was the deadliest U.S. aviation accident since November 2001.
This story records the official account from the first two days after the crash; the cause was then still under investigation, and no cause is stated here.
(Source: National Transportation Safety Board)
Source: National Transportation Safety Board
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：海岸警卫队与多家机构在波托马克河展开搜救（2025年1月30日清晨）。图：美国海岸警卫队照片（Brandon Giles 摄），公共领域，via Wikimedia Commons / Photo: U.S. Coast Guard and partner agencies respond on the Potomac River on the morning of January 30, 2025. Photo: U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 1st Class Brandon Giles, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
