Members of the US figure skating team and their families, along with Russian-born former world champions Yevgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, were on an American Airlines jet that crashed into a US Army helicopter near Reagan National Airport on Wednesday night.
Shishkova and Naumov, a married couple who had been living in the United States since the late 1990s, were coaching young ice skaters. The team and the couple had been in Kansas for a National Development Camp held alongside the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, as reported by Reuters.
The couple won the world pairs championship in 1994.
An EarthCam recorded the collision between the two aircraft around 9 p.m. The small regional jet, which was in the process of landing, had 60 passengers and four crew members on board, while the Sikorsky H-60 helicopter had three US service members. Unfortunately, no survivors have been found, according to CrimeOnline.
Crews have been on the Potomac River all night and by Thursday morning had recovered 28 bodies, WRC reported.
“At this point, we don’t believe there are survivors from this accident, and we have recovered 27 people from this plane and one from the helicopter,” said D.C. Fire and EMS Chief John A. Donnelly.
Investigators are now looking into what happened, while officials speculate. US Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy, a former reality show star who served as district attorney of Ashland County, Wisconsin, before being tapped to head the federal department, said there was no communication breakdown but “obviously there was something happened here.”
“You’ll get more information and more details as this investigation moves forward,” he said. “We’ll learn what happened.”
Duffy said that both aircraft were in standard flight patterns.
President Donald Trump appeared to blame the military aircraft for the crash with no evidence. “Why didn’t the helicopter move?” He asked on his Truth Social media platform.
A former National Transportation Safety Board investigator told NBC, however, that there was little room for error around the airport, the closest to Washington, D.C.
“It’s very tight airspace,” Alan Diehl told NBC’s “Early Today”.
All flights were stopped at the airport after the crash, but it is expected to reopen at 11 a.m.
