Sixty-four people died after an American Airlines jet collided with a helicopter and crashed into the Potomac River.
FORT WORTH, Texas — Fort Worth-based American Airlines is responding after an American Eagle plane collided with a helicopter and crashed into the Potomac River in Washington D.C. Thursday.
American Airlines CEO Robert Isom said the American Eagle flight, which departed from Wichita, Kansas, was making a normal descent into Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport when it collided with a helicopter. There were no survivors, officials said.
Commercial plane crashes are very rare. The last time an American Airlines plane crashed, killing its passengers, was 24 years ago, according to the FAA.
In November 2001, American Airlines 587 crashed shortly after takeoff from New York’s Kennedy International Airport. All 260 people on board and five people on the ground died in the crash.
Of course, just two months earlier nearly 3,000 people were killed as 19 al-Qaida hijackers seized control of four American Airlines jetliners, sending two of the planes into New York’s World Trade Center, a third into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and the fourth into a field in western Pennsylvania. It remains the deadliest terror attack in history.
An American Eagle flight crashed Oct. 31, 1994, in Roselawn, Indiana, killing 64 passengers and four crew members.
