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Breezy Yet Clear Conditions for Potomac Search; NTSB Launches Investigation into Collision; Roy Best is Interviewed about Witnessing the Collision; Several Members of U.S. Figure Skating Community on Flight. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired January 30, 2025 - 06:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


[06:30:00]

KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back to CNN's breaking news coverage.

Overnight we have been covering the collision between an American Airlines commercial jet and a Black Hawk helicopter on a training mission. And there are nearly freezing temperatures here in Washington, D.C., this morning, as you can see here. And as search and rescue efforts are continuing, it's search - it's still a search and rescue effort at this hour although we have been told here at CNN by officials that no survivors at this hour have been pulled from the water.

And you may be able to see in this video why some of the conditions have been so difficult for these first responders. Over 300 first responders involved because of the ice in the river. This is absolutely freezing.

We should note, the Potomac River, oftentimes the winters here in Washington, D.C., relatively mild. That has not been the case this winter. And until just the last few days, much of the Potomac was covered completely or almost completely in ice. We've had some warmer temperatures the past couple of days that started to break it up a little bit.

But it really does underscore just how difficult the conditions were facing these first responders overnight.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN DONNELLY, CHIEF, D.C. FIRE AND EMS: The conditions out there are extremely rough for the responders. It's cold. They're dealing with relatively windy conditions. The wind is hard out on the river. So, they're out there working. We're keeping - doing everything we can to keep them safe.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: All right, joining us now is CNN meteorologist Derek Van Dam with more on this.

And, Derek, these lights behind me are actually from some of the boats that are involved in this search and rescue operation. We're, of course, waiting to see when or if that becomes a search and recovery operation, as this does seem to be getting more grim, in the words of one official who talked to us, by the hour.

What have they been facing out there?

DEREK VAN DAM, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Well, there's ice on the water. That just gives you an indication of how cold it's been. In fact, just last week, I was in D.C. covering the inauguration for the pure fact that it was so cold, welcoming in the president for his term.

Now, this is the conditions at the time of the crash. There were no visibility issues. However, you heard the fire chief just a moment ago in that soundbite played directly before me that there were and continue to deal with some winds gusting around 25 miles per hour. And that indeed was the case when this plane crashed just shortly before 9:00 p.m. yesterday evening.

So, right now, temperatures, 40 degrees. Generally clear conditions. But look what's coming. A storm system that will impact the search and recovery efforts for tomorrow.

Let's get into some more specifics about the water temperature and what the rescue operation - operators and personnel are having to contend with. Her's DCA, Reagan National Airport. There's the collision site. There's a weather sensor that we've been investigating. At the time of the crash, water temperatures were roughly 35 degrees. They maintain those temperatures. It is frigid cold. And unfortunately, when the human body is encountering those types of water temperatures, we're talking about survival rates here, a grim statistic, 30 to 90 minutes for survival rate with those types of water temperatures.

Air time temperatures or air temperatures for the course of the day will warm into the middle 40s, and then the winds start to pick up ahead of our next storm system.

Kasie.

HUNT: All right, Derek Van Dam for us this morning.

Derek, thank you very much for that.

All right, now let's turn to this.

An NTSB go team, that's the kind of team that the National Transportation Safety Board mobilizes in the wake of a tragic incident like this one, has been launched to investigate just how this possibly could have happened. And our Pete Muntean, who, of course, covers aviation for us, walked through and explained how it is that the pilots of both of these aircrafts may not have been able to see each other in the dark.

Let's watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) PETE MUNTEAN, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: A midair collision like this is incredibly rare and really has not happened involving a commercial flight in decades. 1978 was about the same time, and perhaps a grim piece of irony involving a PSA flight.

It's important to note, as we continue to hear about PSA, this airline that was operating this flight on behalf of American Airlines, that is a company that is owned wholly by American Airlines.

This is the flight path that you can see here. The yellow line is of the helicopter. This is the flight tracking data. The orange line is of that American Airlines PSA flight coming in to land on Runway 33 at Reagan National Airport.

[06:35:01]

This is a common and routine approach typically utilized by air traffic controllers to try and squeeze planes in a little bit faster.

This is the image of the fireball that ensued of the helicopter coming right to left toward the bright light there. That is that PSA American Airlines flight. And then smash. That is the mid-air collision and the parts falling to the icy Potomac River below. Water temperature, about 35 degrees tonight.

I've pointed this out a couple times prior, and I have a few models here to demonstrate, just how hard it can be for a pilot of a - pilots of a commercial airliner, two pilots in that airplane, and the pilots of helicopters to see one another.

The blind spot in a commercial airliner is really anything that the pilots are not focused on. When you're descending, you can't see super well below and in front of you. So, it is said that pilots doing a typical approach in a commercial airliner, their brains are lighting off with the same frequency as a doctor doing cardiovascular surgery.

The blind spots in a helicopter, helicopter pilots typically are looking at the ground. And the altitude here was only at about 300 feet. So, you can see here, as the collision sort of is ensuing, helicopter pilots aren't looking up a lot because of where the rotors are. The pilots are probably locked in on the runway in front of them. And you can see how this sort of disaster is in the making.

So, it is - it is really so important to underscore how infrequent mid-air collisions are, but how quickly the recipe, the bad recipe can be concocted and disaster can take place.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: That was our Pete Muntean clearly explaining how something like this possibly could have happened.

All right, coming up next here on CNN, we are expecting a news conference from officials here in Washington, D.C., coming up in the next hour to try to learn more about this ongoing search and rescue effort. We're also going to speak live to a witness of that fiery crash, that

mid-air collision between an American Airlines commercial jet and a Black Hawk helicopter on a training mission.

Stay right here on CNN.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. ROGER MARSHALL (R-KS): When one person dies, it's a tragedy. But when many, many, many people die, it's an unbearable sorrow.

I want the folks to, back home, to just know that we care, that we love them, and that this is a time when we'll have to join arms together.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:42:11]

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

HUNT: Welcome to CNN THIS MORNING. I am Kasie Hunt.

We are covering breaking news overnight. For those of you who are just joining us, emergency crews are battling choppy waters and frigid temperatures. There is a massive search and rescue operation continuing this morning in the Potomac River near Washington, D.C.

We are here in Alexandria, Virginia, actually, just across the river from Washington. The boats involved in that search and rescue operation, just behind us. Of course, Ronald Reagan National Airport, just off to the side here, because last night an American Airlines jet, it was coming from Wichita, Kansas, colliding in mid-air with a military Black Hawk helicopter just as that plane was trying to land at Reagan National. Aircraft - both of those aircrafts, the plane and the helicopter, crashing into the frigid water.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DISPATCHER: Crash, crash, crash. This is an alert three. Crash, crash, crash. This is an alert three.

OPERATIONS: Tower, this is operations. Was that a helo and a CRJ?

TOWER: That is affirmative. Helo CRJ approach into 33.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: The jet had 64 people on board. The helicopter was carrying three crew members. That military aircraft was taking part in a training flight just as this commercial aircraft was landing at DCA.

A law enforcement source tells CNN that no survivors have been found yet. And we are, of course, expecting to hear more from officials coming up in less than an hour now here.

The American Airlines CEO, he says he's going to travel here to D.C. to try and support his employees.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERT ISOM, CEO, AMERICAN AIRLINES: I'd like to express our deep sorrow about these events. This is a difficult day for all of us at American Airlines, and our efforts now are focused entirely on the needs of our passengers, crew members, partners, first responders, along with their families and loved ones. We're cooperating fully with the National Transportation Safety Board in its investigation, and we'll continue to provide all the information we can.

Our cooperation is without pause, and we want to learn everything we can about today's events. That work will take time, but anything we can do now, we're doing. And right now, that means focusing on taking care of all passengers and crew involved, as well as their families.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: And of course, you may be able to hear the helicopters overhead here involved in this operation as we stand here.

[06:45:00]

And it's still dark out, of course, but there is orange light on the horizon here. Sunrise officially not until 7:16 a.m. this morning here in the Washington, D.C., area. But you can see some of that light starting to hit the water. That, of course, is going to change the game for the search and recovery - search and rescue effort here.

Again, we are waiting to hear, is this still a recovery - or a rescue effort? Have they decided that this is instead a recovery effort? Because, of course, we do know that an official told CNN that this is becoming more grim as time has gone by and we have not - no survivors have yet been pulled from the frigid, icy water behind me here.

Let's bring in Rene Marsh, a CNN correspondent, who has been covering this investigation for us.

And, Rene, I know you used to cover aviation for CNN as part of your regular assignment.

What have we learned so far as this effort is underway? And what are we expecting to hear from officials this morning?

RENE MARSH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I think you bring up such a good point about sunrise, because, remember, this all happened last night, 8:48 p.m., the cover of darkness. So, this is really the first daylight that investigators will be able to kind of examine and see a full picture potential. How big this debris field may be. Pieces of potentially the wreckage all going to be critical in this investigation.

And when we talk about who is involved here, we're seeing multiple agencies, the Army, Department of Defense, NTSB, the FAA, all launching their own investigations into all of this.

And what's really going to be critical at this point is finding those black boxes. That is going to be a treasure trove of information for these investigators.

I see we do have these live pictures here. It's hard to make out. Are you able to see what that is, Kasie?

HUNT: Yes, we - we should - just to give our viewers a little bit of a sense here. It's hard - it's a little bit hard for us to actually see what's live on our - on our air as we are talking over it. But what you are looking at, that's a live shot from WJLA. It's a local affiliate here in Washington, D.C.

What we were just looking at a second ago appeared, anyway, to be some of the potential wreckage from the plane.

MARSH: Yes.

HUNT: We do know - we do understand from our sources that the plane is in a number of pieces. And you and I standing here, we can see some of the - the lights, the red lights that are coming from the boats that are doing this search out in the river. If - if - to our, my right, your right as well, is actually the runway and what - Reagan National Airport is on the side of the river that we're standing on. Washington, D.C., in the distance. We can see the Washington Monument and the Capitol.

But, Rene, continue.

MARSH: Yes. I mean and also, as you point out, the runway is right behind us. But this is busy and complicated airspace because you have military aircraft, you have police aircraft, and then you have commercial airliners all coming in, converging on this airspace.

So again, back to the investigation and what they're going to want to learn is what happened here. Because there is equipment on board commercial airliners to essentially warn when an aircraft is too close and within an unsafe distance.

We also know from air traffic control audio that the pilots within that Army Black Hawk helicopter gave verbal confirmation that they had eyes locked on this commercial airliner. They saw it. And we know that just 13 seconds later, that mid-air collision occurred. And you actually hear an audible gasp from those air traffic controllers.

So, what happened within those seconds after the pilots of that Army Black Hawk helicopter said that they saw the aircraft, and between that time and the actual crash. That is the key question for investigators.

And I can't stress enough how just crucial and critical these black boxes will be in this investigation. We know that black boxes, obviously, the site of the crash is the Potomac River. The good news is, those boxes are designed to be water resistant, heat resistant, can endure high temperatures. So, the hope is they can retrieve them, take them to their labs for analysis. And then we start to get this tick tock of events.

And it looks like there's more activity there.

HUNT: Yes, Rene, I mean, I think that anyone can see we don't - we don't want to speculate too much.

MARSH: Right.

HUNT: But our viewers, of course, this is a live shot of the river and the rescue operations and what appears to be either a piece of a plane, a piece of the helicopter, perhaps the helicopter, in the water.

And again, you can start to see this - the light.

[06:50:01]

You can see the light on the river that is coming from the sun. There's some bright, artificial light kind of in the background. But again, this is the most that we have been able to see of the surface of the water since this happened in the 9:00 p.m. hour last night. As dawn is starting to break here in Washington, D.C. We're just about 25 minutes or so from the actual sunrise here in Washington.

Rene, stand by for me for a second because we do have with us this morning an eyewitness to this collision, Roy Best.

Roy, if you're with me, thank you very much for spending some time with us this morning. This must have been a very difficult evening to have seen this unfold. And of course, so many families are just anxiously waiting for news of their loved ones now.

But, Roy, can you tell us what you saw last night?

ROY BEST, WITNESSED CRASH (via telephone): Yes. I was standing on the rooftop of my building with some neighbors, and we have a direct sight going down to the airport. So we can see everything clearly. We were just talking. Next thing you know, I heard a loud explosion. I looked to the left, saw a big - just a big ball of fire, and then wreckage just falling down towards the river. And my neighbor hollered out, oh, my God, that's a plane!

HUNT: Roy, can you give us a sense - not necessarily to exactly, but are you on the Virginia side of the river or the Washington side of the river? How close approximately do you live to the airport?

BEST: Yes, I'm in Arlington, Crystal City. So I'm literally right next to the airport.

HUNT: Yes.

So, Roy, can you describe - I mean the video that we're seeing, I mean, it's - one person we talked to described it like seeing a roman candle. Another called it a fireball. I mean, what did you see? I heard you describe the sound. What did you see in the air? BEST: Yes, definitely a fireball in the air. A fireball, and then

wreckage just went straight down. Again, it was dark outside, so the visibility, you know, was kind of hard to see everything, you know, clear. But you definitely saw the fireball and wreckage going down to the river.

HUNT: Have you ever seen anything like this before in your life?

BEST: Not - not with an airplane. No, I haven't. No.

HUNT: Can you talk a little bit about, since you live so close to the airport, one of the things we've been talking about this morning is just how many planes, how many aircraft there are in the airspace here in Washington. I mean I've lived here going on 20 years now, and I'm continually amazed by it. You must see so much of it living so close.

BEST: Yes. We're on the rooftop all the time, so we see the planes taking off and landing daily. There's a lot of things going on. It's a busy area. You've got the nation's capital. We see the police helicopters. We see the military helicopters going back and forth to the bases, the Pentagon, the different areas. You've also got Coast Guard helicopters. So, it's a pretty busy airspace.

HUNT: Yes, it really is quite remarkable.

And, Roy, just before I let you go here, can you describe, you know, how your friends and others that you were with reacted when you heard, when you saw what happened last night?

BEST: Yes. We were in shock. We were in shock. Probably the last few months and over the summer, they actually had a couple of incidents where things - where some near on collisions with planes. But, you know, you don't figure - you never think it's going to actually happen. And not just happen, that you were going to witness it.

So, we were just in shock. And I'm still in shock this morning.

HUNT: All right, Roy Best, I can't imagine. Thank you very much for spending some time with us this morning as we continue to cover this breaking news.

Roy Best, who saw this crash from the roof of his building here in the Washington, D.C., area last night.

And we do, of course, want to tell you what you're looking at right now. These are live pictures of the search and rescue efforts that are still underway at this hour for the 60 passengers and four crew members that were aboard the American Airlines flight, coming here to Washington Reagan National Airport from Wichita, Kansas, collided, this plane, as it was trying to land, with a Black Hawk helicopter, an Army helicopter, flying out of Fort Belvoir with three crew members on board. Those three crew members were on a training mission.

We did hear the FAA air traffic control speaking with the pilot of the helicopter just moments before this crash occurred, asking the pilot if he could see the airplane. The pilot saying, yes. [06:55:01]

Questions this morning about whether he was looking at something else, looking at a different plane, a different light in the sky, because, of course, just moments later, these aircraft colliding, both plunging into the Potomac River. And this search, of course, has been ongoing just behind us here.

And we - these pictures that you're seeing now are the first pictures with any daylight of what has been going on here. And we think we can see some of the wreckage in parts of the river.

Over 300 first responders came to this scene to try and rescue any of the people who were involved in this crash. And of course, officials from D.C. Fire and EMS talking about just how difficult the conditions have been for those first responders through the night because, of course, the Potomac River has been iced over almost entirely in recent days because of the arctic-like temperatures that were here for the week. Of course you may remember last week for the inauguration here in Washington just how cold it was. They had to move it inside. Those temperatures have come up a little bit in the days since, but so much of that ice still on the river, making these efforts just so difficult and complicated.

And, of course, at this time we are learning more about who was on that plane, as anyone who may, if there - if they are learning of people who've perished, families anxiously awaiting news.

And our Christine Brennan is here. She covers sports for us. And she's here because one of the things we do know is that the U.S. ice skating community, the U.S. teams, essentially, the program that sends figure skaters to the Olympics and other world class sporting competitions, has been deeply impacted by this tragedy.

Christine, can you tell us a little bit more about what we're hearing from U.S. Figure Skating about this crash this morning?

CHRISTINE BRENNAN, CNN SPORTS ANALYST: Yes, Kasie. This looks like it's a - just having a devastating impact on the U.S. figure skating community. U.S. Figure Skating has said several of - members of the community were on the plane. I am, of course, working with my sources. I've covered figure skating since 1988. And I talked to an Olympic coach who told me she was just devastated.

We don't yet have numbers. And, of course, we're not going to give any names out at this point. But it looks - appears to look like coaches, young skaters, family members. And it could be quite a large number.

And for those who are wondering, you know, the U.S. Nationals just happened over the weekend in Wichita. And the skaters we'll see at the Olympics in a year. The Olympic games are in winter of 2026 in Italy, just a year from now. This would not have been those skaters. This is a developmental camp, Kasie, that the skaters stayed after the Nationals. And the national championships ended on Sunday. And then they were working with coaches and top skaters. So, this is U.S. Figure Skating's future. This would be the young

teenagers who we would expect to see bubble to the surface, rise up and compete moving forward, even to the 2030 winter Olympic games. It is absolutely tragic what I'm hearing. The community is devastated. And figure skating, back in 1961, there was a plane crash that killed the entire world team heading to the world championships back in '61, 60 - what, 64 years ago. And so figure skating and tragedies, especially air tragedies, are linked. Thats such an important part of the U.S. Figure Skating community. Even now they have memorials. They talk about the '61 plane crash. I just can't get it out of my mind how now this sport is dealing with another tragedy of this magnitude involving air travel.

And again, the young kids, with their promise and their hopes and their dreams to represent the United States in international competition and the Olympic games, those were those kids who stayed after the National Championships in Wichita so that they could get coaching and have camaraderie with the others and work on their skills as they were going to move forward in this sport that they love so much.

HUNT: Just absolutely devastating. I got chills when you say that this is - this was the future of this program.

Christine Brennan, thank you very much for bringing us that update this morning, although I'm very sorry to have heard that update.

And again here, we are waiting on a news conference from Washington, D.C., officials. It is expected at 7:30 a.m. this morning as we wait to hear the status of this, what has been a search and rescue operation throughout the night, but which we are waiting to find out at what point it may become a search and recovery operation.

[07:00:13]

Because, as you can see, they still are desperately searching the river. But at this hour we know that no survivors have been pulled from the frigid, icy Potomac River.

Of course, now, the sun coming up behind me. We are set to learn more throughout the day.

Stay with CNN as we continue to cover this breaking news coverage. I'm Kasie Hunt. Don't go anywhere.