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Passenger Plane and Army Helicopter Collide Midair, Crash into Potomac; Search for Survivors in Frigid Potomac River After Midair Collision; Soon, Officials Give 7:00 A.M. ET Update on Fatal Midair Collision. Aired 7-7:30a ET
Aired January 30, 2025 - 07:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[07:00:00]
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, John Berman here with Kate Bolduan and Sara Sidner. The major breaking news, a deadly mid air collision over the Potomac River in Washington with many feared dead. You're looking at live pictures right now. And we are standing by for a news conference shortly.
And with this daylight, you are seeing hundreds of first responders, including divers, are in the water searching for any survivors. But we should set expectations. As of now, we have not heard of any.
These are the facts as we know them. 60 passengers, 4 crew, were on board the American Eagle Flight 5342 from Wichita, Kansas, to Washington. As it was landing in D.C. around 9:00 P.M., it collided with a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter that was said to be on a training flight. There were three soldiers on board the helicopter.
Earth cam video shows the moment of impact there right there in that spot shadow of light on the left, right, there's the collision and an explosion.
There is new audio from air traffic control from before and collision. The control tower communicates with the helicopter pilot who reported he had the plane in sight. Then less than 13 seconds later, controllers are gasping.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: PAT 2-5, do you have the CRJ in sight?
PAT 2-5, pass behind the CRJ.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: PAT-25, has aircraft in sight, request visual separation.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 472, Washington Tower, 1 star, 32017.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Crash, crash, crash, this is an alert 3. Crash, crash, crash, this is an alert 3.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Tower, this is operations. Was that a helo and a CRJ?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That is affirmative, helo CRJ approach into 33.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: All right. We have heard from President Trump, and we are now beginning to hear from loved ones of those on the flight. U.S. figure skating has confirmed that several members of the skating community were on board. The group was returning home from a development camp that had just ended in Kansas. As we said, there's a civilian craft in play here, a U.S. Army helicopter.
First, let's go to the Pentagon for information on what that Blackhawk was doing and what you're hearing this morning. Natasha Bertrand?
NATASHA BERTRAND, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, John, we've heard from a number of U.S. Army and defense officials that this Black Hawk was conducting a training mission, and this was a Black Hawk, U.S. Army Black Hawk that was based out of Fort Belvoir, Virginia, but it's still unclear where exactly it took off from before. Of course, it was approaching near Ronald Reagan Airport and ultimately collided with that passenger jet.
We're also told that there were three crew members on board that Black Hawk at the time, three U.S. Army soldiers. And while this was a seemingly a priority air transport, which is a call sign that is used sometimes when these Black Hawks carry VIPs, for example, senior U.S. government officials, we are told that there were no senior U.S. government officials on board at the time. It was these three U.S. Army soldiers.
Now, we're also told at this point that the Army is conducting an investigation in conjunction with the NTSB, with the FAA and with the broader Department of Defense, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. He also said in a tweet last night, absolutely tragic search and rescue efforts still ongoing prayers for all impacted souls and their families. And he said that an investigation was launched immediately by the Army and the Department of Defense.
The Army, for its part, still really trying to get its arms around what exactly happened here. It's worth noting that these Black Hawks, they fly around D.C. all the time. They take off and they land right here at the Pentagon, and they often are carrying senior U.S. Army officials. That was not the case last night. But there are obviously going to be a lot of questions here about why that Black Hawk did not appear to be able to get out of the way of that passenger plane, something that they will be obviously looking into and investigating with the FAA, with the NTSB, with the broader department here in the hours to come, John.
[07:05:00]
BERMAN: All right, Natasha Bertrand at the Pentagon.
SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: All right, let's go back live to the scene where Rene Marsh has been all this morning. What are you learning about those families who are -- many of them waiting at DCA, waiting to hear any word from authorities about the loved ones who they're hoping beyond hope may have survived this?
RENE MARSH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Right. So, what we know is that we're expecting several press conferences today from the NTSB, from the mayor of Washington D.C. So, we're waiting for those sort of updates. But as far as families go, we know that American Airlines has put out a hotline for families who have family members who are on board this commercial regional jet as a means of support as well as giving them the most up-to-date information.
As we said back out here live, I mean, we are hearing lots of activity above by way of choppers, and this is the first daylight that we are seeing since this midair collision occurred. We know that it happened just last night at 8:48, so, again, the first daylight, but this is a moment that families are really holding onto hope. However, as time goes on, rescuers say that the chances of finding people just becomes just more grim.
We know that there are also family members waiting in the airport hoping for information, hoping for the best. I want you to take a listen to this sound bite from this man who says that he spoke to his wife via text message, and here's what he said she told him in her last message to him.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HAMAAD RAZA, WIFE ON PLANE THAT COLLIDED WITH ARMY HELICOPTER: I'm just praying that somebody's pulling her out of the river right now as we speak. That's all I can pray for. I'm just praying to God.
MARSH: When was the last time you spoke with her?
RAZA: She texted me that they were landing in 20 minutes.
MARSH: Can you show us a text message that you got from her?
RAZA: Landing in 20 minutes, the rest of my text did not get delivered. That's when I realized something might be up.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MARSH: So, that husband doing the only thing that he can do at this moment, which is holding on to hope.
More about what we know about the passengers on board, we know the U.S. figure skating governing body has confirmed to CNN that several of their members were on board this commercial regional jet coming back from a training camp in Wichita, Kansas. We also know that two Russian champion figure skaters were also on board, again, the numbers, about 60 passengers and four crew members.
But again, just that agonizing wait for those who know they had family on board this flight, and they are just, quite frankly, just holding on to hope that some sort of miracle where they are pulled out and pulled out alive. Back to you guys. SIDNER: It definitely sends shivers down your spine, knowing that that text message came through and then part of it didn't make it hearing from that husband who is awaiting any word of his wife, who was on that flight.
Thank you so much to you, Rene Marsh.
We're still looking at those live pictures of the scene where there are hundreds of first responders trying to search the area.
Over to you, Kate.
KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Let's talk more about this right now. Joining us right now is Mary Schiavo, she's a former inspector general at the Department of Transportation, and Captain Dennis Tajer, a spokesperson for the Allied Pilots Association, which represents the pilots of American Airlines. An important note on this, given the horrific circumstances, this plane that went down is American-owned, but as a regional plane. The pilots involved are represented by a different union. Thank you both for being here.
Mary, what do you see in this crash so far? What are your first questions about all this? I know you've been watching this from late last night as well.
MARY SCHIAVO, TRANSPORATION ANALYST: Well, my first questions concern, of course, clearances. So, who was cleared to be in the airspace? And also my questions center around altitudes. What altitude was the helicopter supposed to be operating at? And then the third question is equipment. You know, the collision avoidance equipment was certainly on the aircraft. It's required by law. What equipment did the helicopter have? And if they had any equipment at all for collision avoidance, was it operable at the altitude that they were at when the collision occurred?
We know the air traffic control was corresponding. It was communicating with both. The aircraft was cleared in making its final approach to land, which means it had clearance for that airspace to get into the airport and land.
[07:10:02]
And then I noticed, and this is just me reading the radar, but they were at 350 feet. And obviously there'll be a great investigation. Is that the altitude the helicopter was supposed to be at? I mean, the plane certainly was, you know, very much on final and was cleared into the airport.
So, the communications said to the last ones that we know of at least said to the helicopter, do you have the plane in sight? And that means that the helicopter was supposed to see and avoid the aircraft. But there's many more questions, especially, as I said, about equipment that was available in the helicopter to help them navigate, to help them avoid the aircraft.
Training, what equipment were they using? Were they using any special equipment in the helicopter? You know, night vision goggles, for example, to help them train at night, etcetera, many, many questions. But both the Defense Department has an investigation team, which they always do for a Defense Department accident, and the NTSB. And already I'm sure they have many leads and have pulled the records of the airline, the equipment and are coordinating with the military.
BOLDUAN: Yes. Captain Tajer, you've been with American for 30-plus years. This is just horrific on so many levels for so many people, including devastating for the piloting community. What are your thoughts?
DENNIS TAJER, AMERICAN AIRLINES PILOT: Absolutely. And Mary made some great points. But our thoughts and prayers, we have to keep remembering this just happened for the passengers, the crews on both aircraft and their families and those first responders risking life and limb to rescue and now likely to recover, courage beyond belief.
To some of the points that Mary brought up, questions are going to be asked. They're going to be found through, as she knows, and the world knows the NTSB will go deep dive into this. But some of those equipment issues, what are the procedures? And most importantly, what are the procedures taking into account to trap error? That's what this (INAUDIBLE) business is really all about. I haven't had a perfect flight my entire career, so it was a little something to do better. So, what clearances do they give to helicopters to transverse and then assume perhaps there's a misidentification or directions are not complied with, what traps that error?
And to get to the technology, we do have collision avoidance systems on the airplane, but on my aircraft, and I don't think it's that dissimilar, as you get closer to the ground, because the pilot is focused on landing the aircraft and on my aircraft below 500 feet, the audio alert traffic alerts is inhibited. So, the direction and the actual alert -- so I'll focus on landing on the air runway at night, I'm not going to get any sound alert because there shouldn't be any air traffic that close to the runway.
So, a lot of questions, a lot of speculation, we'll hold on what the reasons were. We'll recognize what facts we do have currently to keep us safe. But most importantly, we've got to ask everyone involved. What are we going to do to prevent this from ever happening again?
BOLDUAN: Ever happening again. Captain, your perspective on that and what that was going to be my question is you have flown into D.C. many a time. It is known to be a challenging airport land and I've seen that it requires additional training for pilots to operate from it. What makes it so challenging?
TAJER: Yes, it's very unique. Not is it only congested, the runways are quite short as well, but you have the airspace is restricted, the prohibited areas that protect our capital, rightfully so. So, it's a precarious balance of security and jamming in as many airplanes as you can get in there because demand is so high.
Now, I don't mean that as pejorative. It's just the effort to have free commerce into our nation's capital. However, you can lose track of the balance of the safety margin across the entire U.S. with strained air traffic control systems. And this is not looking into this incident, but you've got all the things stacked up against you.
And, for instance, in the DCA, I was in there just recently, we have to brief special procedures into DCA because of the challenge it is. And now throw in night and you don't have to be a pilot to realize this. You look out your window and it looks like the preponderance of lights on the ground mixing with airplanes. It's a very challenging environment to call out. Yes, I have visual with the aircraft that you're identifying. And then that's just trusting that you're seeing the right airplane.
We've got to find out what the things that trap an error are. And if they're not there, build those traps, make them stronger, because we have got to protect the American public's trust in the system and stop these -- prevent tragedies like this from ever happening again.
[07:15:08]
BOLDUAN: Absolutely. Captain, you have flown with American Airlines for more than 30 years and you've flown in and out of DCA. Can you help take us inside the cockpit once again? What all is going on? We know that they were cleared for landing. What all is going on on those final minutes of approach into DCA? There's talk of, you know, Runway 33. Take me into the mind of the pilot landing that was on approach.
TAJER: Absolutely. If you sat in the cockpit, you might think, boy, there's not much going on, but we have procedures we're relying on. And inside the pilot's head, the process of looking ahead of the airplane, flying the aircraft, taking into account the weather traffic, it's all happening there. And it is a cacophony of activity. And many times it is two pilots, some are talking about taking away one of the pilots, talking to each other, hey, do you see the traffic? Roger, I do see it. It's at 1:00 confirmation. And it's all there to ensure that we're trapping any errors that might happen and there's a crosscheck.
To give you an idea of how we operate as pilots, we're a bit of a group of awfulizers. We're looking for the next mistake and that is not to provide any type of alarm for passengers. That's to give you the comfort that we're not looking for that everything going well. We're looking at when things don't go well, of stopping that trend. The saying goes, you have to investigate accidents before they happen, not after to get long-term fixes. So, that's where we are.
It's extremely challenging, but we're up for the task. We have the technology, the procedures. We just have to ensure that everyone is back and everyone else up and complacency has no place in our skies today. And we've got to make sure that we maintain that attitude. It's a fight out there.
BOLDUAN: I mean, a midair collision is just so incredibly rare because of all of the work that's been done to catch these errors. That's something very clearly went so very wrong here.
Mary Schiavo. Thank you. Captain Tajer, thank you very much for coming in. Thank you so much.
We're going to continue with our breaking news coverage of this. Next, we're going to speak to an eyewitness who recorded the moments immediately after as first responders were arriving on the scene.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[07:20:00]
BERMAN: All right. We are standing by for a news conference from Washington. You're looking at live pictures right there. The lectern is all set up. This is for the latest on the midair collision of American Flight 5342 and the U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter. Many people are feared dead this morning.
This is what witnesses saw over the Potomac.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JIMMY MAZEL, WITNESS: We're watching the planes land and they're all lined up in a row perfectly, you know? And then we sort of saw these white flares start flying out of the sky, so we were kind of concerned.
And then shortly after, we saw the planes disperse and go their own ways. They all like went around.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: All right. Let's try to explain exactly what happened here. As far as we understand it at this time, this is the American Airlines flight approaching Reagan National Airport, which is right here. It's approaching it flying to the northwest to approach on this runway you see right here. This is the line it's taking in.
Right here is the helicopter flying from north to south. You can see it is on the Washington side of the Potomac River, almost hugging Washington, D.C. That is a corridor used by helicopters along the Potomac often for training flights.
Let's take a look at the aircrafts involved here. The American flight was a Bombardier CRJ700. This is a single aisle, two seats on both sides. It's an aircraft much like this one. It was pretty full, 60 passengers, 4 crew. The U.S. Army UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter, it holds 12 people. There were three on board, but it is a big, powerful aircraft.
I'm going to show the video that we have of the collision. I know it is difficult to look at, but it's a little instructive as to what happened here. Let me X this out and play the video. That's a wide angle right there. You're going to see a closer view in just one second. I want to pause it. You can see the two different aircraft right here, light here and a light here.
And one thing I just want to point out is how low they are. They're very, very close to the ground, relatively speaking. That's because the plane was coming in for a landing and a helicopter was operating close to the ground. If we keep on playing this, you see the two blips of light, and then you see the collision right there.
Again, witnesses saw this camera saw this. We are waiting for much more information on how it happened. The helicopter was certainly aware of the aircraft at that time. These are some of the questions we have at this moment. Sara?
SIDNER: All right. Some people who live along the Potomac have been anxiously waiting and watching as a search and rescue operations are appearing outside their windows.
Abadi Ismail took his video from his home of crews searching the water. You're looking at that video right now. He is joining us live. thank you so much for joining us.
Can you first tell us you have these huge windows that overlooked the Potomac? What did you see last night outside of the window?
ABADI ISMAIL, WITNESS AND D.C. RESIDENT: So, it was somewhere around 8:50 P.M.. I was in my living room when I hear two bangs around 8:50 P.M.
[07:25:00]
It was loud. It was unusual. It was something you only hear on video games, on movies, something I have never experienced. That's what I call my attention and I start looking at the window right there. And immediately I saw the smoke on the south side of the runway near, I would say, the Washington Sailing Marina.
Never ever could I have thought that this is a plane crash, but it was a smoke, I didn't -- you know, I have an advantage view here of the Reagan Airport, the military base, the Potomac, and then, of course, the river.
Then I took a few shots of the helicopters that are flying. I've noticeably seen boats getting deployed from the wharf station, D.C. P.D., Arlington Police, U.S. Coast Guard, so something that was not right happening.
Keep in mind, the water at the Potomac, some areas are still frozen river. And we're talking about frozen river. I just saw a few airboats. Those are special boats that they can maneuver all of this ice to get into the sites, okay? So, the rescue mission is complicated enough, and add to that the night scene, the night vision, the water temperature. We're talking about every morning I go check down the Marina, the water temperature is 39 degrees as we speak. So, hypothermia is absolutely inevitable. And we're talking about a minute to five minutes at the very most.
So, what I've seen is something I could never imagine. It's devastating to even think D.C. could have another crash. You know, looking back the history that something happened back in the 90s as well. And, you know, just what the captain say, this is a major traffic area. We have three airports here. You know, which is right there. Dulles Airport is about 30 minutes and then you have Baltimore Airport. So it's very heavy, heavy dense traffic.
And just based on my experience when I look at the T.V., when I look at that, the traffic, most of the planes fly north going south, north of the Potomac going south to the Potomac, toward the Reagan Airport. So, this is how I've been witnessing all of the plane.
SIDNER: Abadi, can you tell me what you are seeing right now? Because you have this incredible view of the Potomac and you talked about the fact that you heard this crash before you saw the result of the sound that you heard. So, you're that close. What are you seeing right now this morning as you talk about how there are frozen patches all over the Potomac and how cold that water is, that rescuers are trying to navigate this morning?
ISMAIL: That is correct. So, I see at least two gigantic commercial vessels at the crash sites. I see a handful of rescue boats. I was talking about eight boats on the crash sites. On the east side of the river, besides the military base, (INAUDIBLE), I see airboats. I see helicopters. It's a very active scene at the Potomac right now.
They come and go. It's -- yes, sorry.
SIDNER: I'll let you get something of water there. I just want to remind people what we are looking at right now. We are looking at the live pictures of what you're describing, Abadi, where you're seeing all of these rescue boats on the water there, and you're seeing the remnants of the crash. You can see the helicopter every now and then you can see the remnants of the plane.
I know that you've never, you said, experienced something like this, but you were in this particularly interesting position where you're seeing all of the traffic that goes to and from not only this airport, but the other two airports Dulles, and as you talked about, Baltimore that are there.
What are you experiencing now after watching this? And did you see -- after you heard the sound? Did you see the breakup of the plane and sort of where that was from your vantage point?
ISMAIL: So, it's very dark at night. It was 9:00 P.M. Hard to really even -- you know, to think that there is a plane crash. My main concern, as being a master captain at the U.S. Coast Guard, is the search and rescue mission. We're talking about the currents at the Potomac is very strong.
[07:30:01]
We're talking about I don't know, you know, if it's a search and rescue mission is still underway.