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The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper
Flight Risk: American Airlines Flight 5342; The Whole Story With Anderson Cooper "Flight Risk". Aired 7-8p ET
Aired February 02, 2025 - 19:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[19:00:04]
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: Welcome to THE WHOLE STORY. I'm Anderson Cooper at Reagan National Airport near the side of the deadliest aviation disaster in the U.S. since 2001.
Sixty-four people were on board an American Airlines flight from Wichita, Kansas, to Washington, D.C. on Wednesday night when it collided with an Army Black Hawk helicopter carrying three U.S. service members. No one survived.
The investigation into what happened is well underway, and in this next hour, we're going to tell you what we know about the circumstances surrounding this crash and look at some of the key safety issues the aviation industry has been dealing with in recent years.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Tower, Bluestreak 5342 on Mount Vernon visual, Runway 1.
COOPER (voice-over): Wednesday, 8:43 p.m., on a moonless night near Washington, D.C.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Bluestreak 5342, Washington Tower, 320 at 17, gusts 25. Can you take Runway 33?
COOPER: Air traffic control at Reagan National Airport asked inbound American Airlines Flight 5342 to land on an alternate runway, number 33.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, we can do 33 for Bluestreak 5342.
MARY SCHIAVO, FORMER INSPECTOR GENERAL, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION: The fact that the pilot was asked to switch says to me that the air traffic control tower was trying to get additional traffic into or out of the airport. That's not uncommon.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: PAT 2-5, do you have the CRJ in sight?
COOPER: PAT 2-5 is an Army Black Hawk helicopter flying near the airport. CRJ is the American Airlines plane.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: PAT 2-5, pass behind the CRJ. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: PAT 2-5 has aircraft in sight, request visual
separation.
SCHIAVO: The helicopter asked for visual separation. What that means is the helicopter pilot said to the tower that it would look for other aircraft and avoid other aircraft, taking responsibility for seeing other aircraft and avoiding them.
COOPER: About 12 seconds after the pilot says that the collision occurs.
PETE MUNTEAN, CNN AVIATION AND TRANSPORTATION CORRESPONDENT: The helicopter, the Black Hawk, coming from screen left, and American Flight 5342 coming in to land on Reagan National Airport Runway 33. And then there's a huge fireball and you see the sparks fly and pieces of the fuselage of the plane fall into the Potomac and sort of the helicopter arc off and fall into the Potomac.
It's a pretty grisly piece of video.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They just went.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Tower, did you see that?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Crash, crash, crash. This is alert three.
COOPER: Sixty-four people are on board the airplane. Three on the helicopter. Nobody survives.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What happened?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, my god.
COOPER: The collision is captured by several cameras. The videos now crucial evidence for investigators.
SCHIAVO: When I first saw that video, there were two aircraft in that video and one light was brighter and was moving. As a pilot myself, I can tell you at night your eyes tend to go to the moving target and the brighter moving light was not this aircraft. This aircraft light was not as bright and it appeared to be not moving because it was headed straight for the helicopter flying at night, while it's beautiful, it is hard to distinguish among lights.
COOPER: It's common near Reagan National for helicopters to fly under commercial aircraft. There are several FAA approved helicopter corridors near the airport.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: I don't know of any other airspace in the country where helicopter routes are laid out right underneath the final approach path to a runway. It doesn't happen anywhere else.
MUNTEAN: These helicopter routes have existed for a long time. Primarily to make it so that military and government helicopters can fly down the Potomac River. They use these helicopters to fly top brass of the military. We're talking generals and admirals and VIPs. It's a more efficient way for them to get to point A to point B. Envision sort of a tunnel like the Lincoln Tunnel going under the Hudson River. But there still may be boats going overhead.
COOPER: The Black Hawk involved in the crash was on a training mission that put it along Route 4.
[19:05:02]
O'BRIEN: That Corridor 4, that helicopter route number four, which is right beside the airport where the helicopters are supposed to remain no higher than 200 feet.
COOPER: According to the National Transportation Safety Board, the collision occurred at about 325 feet.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They were too high.
O'BRIEN: That difference in altitude is exactly why there was a collision. So the question we have to ask ourselves is, why was that helicopter above the ceiling for that corridor?
COOPER: About 125 feet above the ceiling and off course from its approved route by at least half a mile. According to the Defense Department, the crew of three on the Black Hawk were conducting a training mission. It's not yet known if the pilots were wearing night vision goggles at the time of the collision.
DAVID SOUCIE, FORMER FAA SAFETY INSPECTOR: If they had night vision goggles on, there's only 70 degrees that you can see out of those goggles. You can't see left and right. You can't see 180. There's no peripheral vision with those goggles at all. And the other thing is that the lights are much brighter and they're toned down by the goggles to make sure that they don't blind the person that's wearing them.
O'BRIEN: The Black Hawk helicopter was flying under visual flight rules, as all helicopters do in that corridor. The rules are very simple. See and avoid. The responsibility rests inside the cockpit with that flight crew to avoid other traffic. That's the simple rules.
COOPER: The so-called black boxes have been recovered, and Saturday night the NTSB revealed that one second before impact, there was an audible reaction inside the cockpit of Flight 5342, and the pilot increased the pitch of the plane.
SCHIAVO: An increase in pitch means they're putting the nose up towards the sky and trying to climb. But it came literally within a second at the time of the impact so that tells us that they did not see the helicopter until just, you know, a second at impact.
COOPER: Investigators are looking at not just what happened with both aircraft, but also with air traffic control at Reagan National.
MUNTEAN: The controller was working two positions at one time, meaning that they were speaking not only to commercial flights taking off and landing at Reagan National Airport but also helicopters that fly the special corridor through the busy airspace there.
SCHIAVO: It's dangerous, but it's not uncommon. The FAA does this on their air traffic control staffing somewhat regularly. They try to do it in off-peak hours.
MUNTEAN: Air traffic controllers are really pushed to the limit right now. There's a huge shortage of air traffic controllers.
O'BRIEN: They filled about 1800 spots in the past year or so, but still have about 3,000 vacancies to fill.
MUNTEAN: Air traffic controllers are stressed. It's a tough job. Many of them, because of the shortages are working mandatory 10-hour days, six-day weeks. They really don't get any time to rest between their shifts and fatigue has been a huge topic of interest in aviation when it comes to the pace of near-misses that we have seen on or near the runways at commercial airports in 2023 and in 2024.
COOPER: The FAA documented nearly 1800 runway incursions in 2024, which could be anything from near misses to a plane, person or vehicle in the wrong place on or near a runway. Two of those incidents involved helicopters near Reagan National Airport. A third event, also involving a helicopter near Reagan, occurred in 2022. And the night before Wednesday's crash, another plane approaching the airport changed course after a helicopter flew near its path.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's a helicopter over Georgetown, northbound 300 feet.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We had an RA. Brickyard 4514 is going around.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Go around heading 250, climb and maintain 3,000.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We had an RA with the helicopter traffic below us.
SCHIAVO: At this airport it was considered an issue by people who used the airport and who knew about the problems. So at this point, no one can say it wasn't a problem. It wasn't known about.
COOPER: Reagan National Airport was built to handle 15 million passengers a year. It now has about 25 million annually. And just last year, Congress authorized five additional roundtrip routes.
SEN. TIM KAINE (D-VA): I fought very hard and tried to convince my colleagues last year that it was a mistake to add more flights because this is an airport that is already among the busiest and most congested, most prone to delay, and hence most, you know, prone to the danger of a safety risk of any in the United States.
[19:10:00]
O'BRIEN: There is a constituency among political elites to keep Reagan Airport going because it's convenient for them to get on flights.
SOUCIE: That airport cannot stand any more traffic and traffic has increased. So I think that that's one of the things that NTSB is going to make a recommendation on, and that the FAA is going to have to support some kind of restriction or lowering of the volume at that airport.
COOPER: Friday night, while searches for crash victims continued in Washington, in Philadelphia, another plane, a twin engine Learjet, crashed to the ground.
With two aviation disasters in one week, what are the risks when it comes to flying? That's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COOPER: Just two nights after the fatal collision in Washington, D.C., another plane crashes to the ground in Philadelphia. It was a twin engine Learjet. A medevac flight with six passengers, including a pediatric patient.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, my god.
COOPER: No one survived. At least one person on the ground was killed and 19 others injured. It's not yet known what caused this plane crash in Philadelphia, but in Washington, investigators are already analyzing cockpit voice recorders from both the plane and the helicopter in Wednesday's midair collision.
PETER GOELZ, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: I think that human error will at least be a strong contributing factor. May not be the probable cause, but it will be a strong contributing factor.
Some human beings made some mistakes. It's always painful and difficult to discuss when highly trained, skilled, admirable folks make a mistake and it causes a terrible accident. It happens. It's tough, but it's the reality.
COOPER: According to safety data, the vast majority of aviation accidents are the result of human error, which doesn't always mean the pilots.
O'BRIEN: When you really start looking at those numbers, it makes it sound like there's a huge rampant problem. But what you have is a scenario where the number of accidents overall involving big airliners is declining. The way aircraft are built, the reliability of engines, the automation in the cockpit has tried to address all of these gaps in safety that have been uncovered over the years through various accidents.
[19:15:00]
What's left is the human being, and we haven't found a good way to put a new chip in the pilot to make them better at what they do. They're still human beings that make mistakes.
In 1985, a Japan Airlines 747 with 524 people on board. It's the largest single aircraft fatality crash. 520 people died. It had a structural failure in the tail, which caused the vertical stabilizer to blow off. COOPER: Investigators later determined the structural failure was
because of a faulty repair. In 2019, the Boeing 737 MAX Airliner was grounded for 20 months after two crashes five months apart, one in Indonesia, the other in Ethiopia. In all, 346 people died. Both disasters were caused in part by engineering and manufacturing problems.
O'BRIEN: You can never cut corners on maintenance and training, and expect not to pay for it. It may not happen right away, but it will happen eventually.
COOPER: Prior to the collision in Washington, one of the biggest and most recent mishaps in the U.S. was in January of last year. A door of an Alaska Airlines Boeing jet blew off mid-flight.
GOELZ: The plane was sent to Boeing to do some maintenance, and somebody forgot to put the bolts in place that locked the plug permanently. It took a number of flights and a number of weeks before the plug shimmied loose. And on this flight, when it reached pressurization altitude above 10,000 feet, it blew out.
COOPER: Thankfully no one was killed and the plane made an emergency landing.
Sometimes it's the customers on board that create dangerous incidents in the air.
O'BRIEN: Another human failure is the passengers. The jackass that wants to open the emergency door prematurely.
COOPER: That's what happened less than two years ago on this Asiana Air flight en route to South Korea. A man opened the emergency door of the plane just before landing.
O'BRIEN: People are cramming onto these airplanes and not always behaving well, especially after they've had a few in-flight drinks. The common theme through all of this is you have a system which puts people on edge.
COOPER: A few weeks ago, a similar incident took place on a JetBlue plane taxiing at Boston's Logan Airport. A passenger opened an aircraft door, deploying the emergency slide.
MUNTEAN: The air travel system in the U.S. is really bursting at the seams. It's being incredibly taxed. The Sunday after this past Thanksgiving, there were three million people on commercial flights in the U.S. in one day. We're talking about the population of Los Angeles, of people flying.
COOPER: Pilot error has led to a number of well-known crashes. In 1994, pilots on China Airlines Flight 140 attempted to pitch the plane down while the autopilot was pitching the aircraft up. The plane crashed killing 264 people on board. In 2001, American Airlines Flight 587 crashed shortly after takeoff from New York's JFK Airport.
GOELZ: The flying pilot overused the rudders. It was believed that he was trained that way and jerked the tail off his plane, which caused fatal out of control dive.
SCHIAVO: Most of the time when you have a pure pilot error, they call it loss of situational awareness. And that's where a pilot just gets into a situation and responds incorrectly, puts the plane into a spiral or dive. It doesn't follow the instruments. It doesn't realize that his or her airspeed is decreasing or deteriorating, and just makes a human error that destroys the plane and cost lives.
COOPER: Sometimes those errors are attributed to pilot fatigue, an issue brought to light after the 2009 Colgan Air crash in Buffalo, New York. When the plane stalled, the captain pulled instead of pushed on the plane's control column. All 49 people on board died.
LES ABEND, FORMER AMERICAN AIRLINES PILOT: We determined that these pilots were on duty for a long time. Not only have we restricted hours based on the time that you fly, but we've done a deeper dive into what we call circadian rhythm. Certain times of the day, you get more fatigue.
GOELZ: When you're tired, you make mistakes.
[19:20:02]
The most famous was a flight into Guantanamo Bay, in which the pilots had been working long hours, and they missed a number of key points that would have told them to take action. And the plane crashed. So fatigue is an ongoing issue.
COOPER: Another ongoing issue in aviation safety is runway close calls and collisions.
GOELZ: The worst accident in the history of aviation was a runway incursion on the island of Tenerife, where two 747s that had been diverted there and they hit each other, and over 500 people were killed.
COOPER: These close calls have ramped up even more in recent years. In February 2023, a FedEx jet came less than 100 feet of the runway before its pilots realized a Southwest Jet was taking off on the same runway. It was one of five such incidents in a period of just seven weeks.
And this past December, chartered jet carrying the Gonzaga men's basketball team nearly crossed a runway at Los Angeles International Airport, where a Delta plane was taking off.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Stop, stop, stop.
COOPER: The FAA is still investigating these incidents.
MUNTEAN: These near collisions keep happening on or near the runways of major airports because in some cases, complacency, in some cases controller fatigue, or just don't have full fidelity or awareness into what's happening in front of them. There's been a lot of new people in the aviation system, not only at the airline pilot level, but also at the air traffic control level. Also, flight attendants, gate agents and what are called below the wing workers like people on the ramp. So there are incredible risks right now in the aviation system.
COOPER: Another cause of those risks is the shortage of air traffic controllers.
O'BRIEN: This problem became much worse during the pandemic. Many controllers retired or there was natural attrition. And when the pandemic was over, suddenly everybody got back on planes and the FAA was caught flat-footed without enough train controllers.
COOPER: Congestion at major airline hubs has only been getting worse.
SCHIAVO: We stuff the majority of our traffic into about 30 airports, so now we have planes in operations even closer to each other, concentrated in many cases at a very few airports when it needs to be spread out.
MUNTEAN: In some ways, it's a miracle that aviation has such a stellar safety record that it does. I think we really take that for granted, that flights arrive most of the time on time, and are mostly not canceled. It takes a lot of teamwork. It really is a huge ballet that happens with incredible regularity and reliability.
ABEND: We're all humans. And sometimes we misjudge. We're never going to get the human element completely out of flying.
COOPER: Up next, the risks in the airspace we can't control.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[19:28:08]
SCHIAVO: Bird strikes are dramatically on the rise. A bird the size of a Canada goose, an eagle, they can take out an engine or both engines if he had a flock.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We begin with breaking news. Officials now say that nearly everyone on board a plane that crashed in South Korea has died.
COOPER: December 29th, 2024.
PAULA NEWTON, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: 181 people were traveling on the Jeju Air passenger jet, which crashed while landing at Mujan International airport.
COOPER: A nearby business owner captured the crash landing on his cell phone. You can see the plane skidding across the runway. Moments later, the Boeing 737 slammed into a nearby embankment and exploded. 179 people died. About five minutes before crashing, the plane hit a flock of ducks.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The control tower warned the plane about birds in the area. Minutes later the pilot called out mayday, mayday, mayday. And then bird strike.
ABEND: I've had various bird strikes over the years in commercial airplanes. We are advised of birds upon landing. There's not a whole lot we can do because the airplane has forward momentum. We can't really stop the airplane and wait for the birds.
SOUCIE: Is there something you can do to prevent birds from entering an engine? Very little.
COOPER: Korean investigators believe the strike may have caused damage to the engines and the landing gear.
JOHN VAUSE, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: The report says avian blood and feathers were found in each engine.
GOELZ: Birds and aircrafts haven't gotten along since flight began. Even today, the airports tend to be located near bodies of water.
SCHIAVO: Bird strikes are increasing because we have increased the number of wetlands. We have located in the United States many, many wetlands near airports.
[19:30:13]
COOPER (voice over): New York's LaGuardia Airport is situated near the east river in Queens, along Flushing Bay.
CAPT. CHESLEY SULLY SULLENBERGER, HERO PILOT, FLIGHT 1549: Ah, this, uh, Cactus 1539. Hit birds, we lost thrust in both engines. We're turning back towards LaGuardia.
COOPER (voice over): January 15th, 2009.
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL: Cactus 1529, if we can get it you. Do you want to try to land Runway 1-3?
SULLENBERGER: We're unable. We may end up in the Hudson.
It was a startling event to have hit so many large birds. A flock of Canada Geese that weigh 10 or 12 pounds, with 5 foot or 6 foot wingspans. And have them hit the whole airplane.
COOPER (voice over): Passengers of US Airways Flight 1549 remember the moment the birds hit.
PAM SEAGLE, PASSENGER, FLIGHT 1549: I had just reached under my seat to pull out a book that I was going to read on the flight. And that's when i remember hearing the thud.
ERIC STEVENSON, PASSENGER FLIGHT 1549: The birds had been -- just completely consumed by the engine.
CLAY PRESLEY, PASSENGER FLIGHT 1549: And that burning smell came into the airplane.
SEAGLE: What's most frightening to me was the silence. There was no engine noise.
COOPER (voice over): The bird strike caused both engines to lose power.
SULLENBERGER: We're going to be in the Hudson.
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL: I'm sorry, say again, Cactus.
EAGLE FLIGHT 4718: I think he said he was going in the Hudson.
COOPER (voice over): Given the lack of altitude at the time of the strike, Captain "Sully" Sullenberger had to make a decision. Land the airbus A320 in the Hudson River, or risk crashing on the way back to the airport.
REPORTER: It's the unforgettable image with the even more unforgettable ending.
COOPER (voice over): He made the right choice.
REPORTER: We've had a Miracle on 34th street, I believe, now, we've had a miracle in the Hudson.
MUNTEAN: The challenges are innumerable and aviation is incredibly dynamic and flying, the conditions are changing all the time.
GOELZ: Icing is one of the most insidious dangers to commercial aircraft.
COOPER (voice over): In certain weather conditions, ice can build up on the wings of an aircraft.
O'BRIEN: The last fatal accident in Washington, DC, was the Air Florida crash in 1982. Deicing procedure occurred at the gate. The aircraft had to wait in line for quite some time to take off, and in the process of waiting in line, ice built up on the aircraft once again.
It took off with ice on its wings and could not get airborne and crashed into the river after clipping the 14th Street Bridge.
SCHIAVO: The aircraft already have to be able to withstand pretty bad weather. Now, that's not advocating that you should fly off to any kind of weather, but airplanes are built to be pretty tough.
COOPER (voice over): Any kind of weather can cause what many passengers fear. Severe turbulence, something that's becoming increasingly common.
O'BRIEN: Research has indicated that from 1979 to 2020, the frequency of severe clear air turbulence over the North Atlantic, which of course is a big flight corridor, increased by 55 percent.
COOPER (voice over): This cell phone video was taken on a Scandinavian Airlines flight heading to Miami in November 2024.
O'BRIEN: Air is invisible, but it's like a multi-layered river with all kinds of cross-currents. And as a plane flies through it, it can hit these cross-currents, causing sudden changes in the direction and the speed of the relative wind.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When they hit turbulence, the airplane is designed to roll like a boat on the ocean.
COOPER (voice over): June 2019. A flight attendant is hurled into the air by violent turbulence on the way to France.
O'BRIEN: If you're not buckled in and you hit some tough turbulence, you will be thrown to the ceiling of the aircraft and laptops and handbags, briefcases become airborne. The carts that the flight attendants are moving, they become airborne and people can be very badly injured.
COOPER (voice over): Badly injured, or in rare cases, killed.
REPORTER: At least one person is dead following severe turbulence on a flight from London to Singapore.
COOPER (voice over): May 2024.
REPORTER: More than 100 people injured, 28 people suffered spinal, brain and skull injuries when they were thrown from their seats.
COOPER (voice over): Local officials say Singapore Airlines Flight 321 dropped nearly 200 feet in less than five seconds.
MUNTEAN: They were storms that the pilots couldn't see because the radar didn't show up rain. These pilots may have not been able to see this growth take place so quickly. They may have just been flying through the ingredients of a thunderstorm, but maybe not fully in a thunderstorm just yet.
[19:35:18]
COOPER (voice over): Why is there such an uptick in turbulence? Scientists and aviation experts point to climate change.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: First of all, more people are flying. There's more traffic, so, you're going to get more. But as the temperature rises due to climate change, the temperature gradients, the difference in temperatures at altitudes is becoming more pronounced and it is creating an environment where turbulence is becoming worse.
We can only assume that as time goes on and the climate continues to warm, this is going to be a bigger problem.
COOPER (voice over): When we return.
MARY OHARA, MOTHER OF RYAN OHARA, DIED IN FLIGHT 5342: He was a good son, a very loving father to his little boy.
COOPER (voice over): What we know about the 67 people killed in Wednesday's devastating mid-air collision.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: All those dreams gone in a second.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[19:40:59] REPORTER: They have said that they've shifted from a search and rescue to a recovery operation, the DC Fire --
GOELZ: When I saw the accident, I knew that it was unlikely that there was going to be any survivors.
COOPER (voice over): Three soldiers were aboard the Black Hawk helicopter that collided with flight 5342. The pilot, Chief Warrant Officer, Andrew Eaves, had more than a thousand hours of flight. The copilot, 28-year-old Captain Rebecca Lobach, had 500 hours. Ryan O'Hara was the crew chief, he was 28, married with a one-year-old son. Ryan, joined the Army right out of high school and flew on Black Hawks in Afghanistan in 2017. I spoke to his parents two days after the crash.
MARY O'HARA: He was a good son, a very. loving father to his little boy.
GARY O'HARA, FATHER OF RYAN O'HARA, DIED IN FLIGHT 532: He had been doing this for ten years. He was a natural born teacher. Loved working with people, loved working in the Black Hawks. For Ryan, it was everything.
COOPER: Mary, you must have been so concerned about him when he was in Afghanistan.
MARY O'HARA: Yes, absolutely. I was worried the entire time he was over there. I never would have thought that this is how it would happen.
COOPER: You thought the dangerous part was over?
MARY O'HARA: Yes.
COOPER (voice over): When first responders recovered one of the Black Hawk crew members, they were seen saluting the flag draped remains. We're still learning details about those who died on flight 5342 but here are some of those whose lives were lost.
Captain Jonathan Campos and First Officer Samuel Lilley loved to fly and loved their families. Jonathan's aunt said he wanted to be a pilot from the time he was three years old. He was 34 when he died.
Sam Lilley was going to get married in the fall. His dad, Timothy, was a helicopter pilot in the Army. "I was so proud when Sam became a pilot," he wrote. "Now, it hurts so bad I can't even cry myself to sleep. I know I'll see him again, but my heart is breaking."
Sam's sister spoke to ABC News.
TIFFANY GIBSON, SAM LILLEY'S SISTER: He was excited about life and his future and getting a dog and a house and kids. This is just tragic.
COOPER (voice over): Sam Lilley was 29 years old.
Ian Epstein loved to fly too and travel. IAN EPSTEIN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT, DIED ON FLIGHT 5342: There is absolutely, positively no and I mean no frowning at all on this airplane.
COOPER (voice over): He was a flight attendant, and it seems the job suited him perfectly. A ball of vibrant, colorful energy. That's how one friend described him. He made friends everywhere he went, his sister, Robbie said. This is video of Ian singing to the cabin last May.
EPSTEIN: We hope you appreciate our hospitality. Marry one of us and you'll always fly for free. Remember, we love you at American Airlines.
COOPER (voice over): Ian has two children and two stepchildren. He will be sorely missed. Ian Epstein was 53.
Danasia Elder was also a flight attendant. She had just started last year and her brother-in-law said it was a dream job for her. She survived by her husband and two children. Their lives are now forever changed.
REPORTER: As we're learning. US figure skating confirms that several members of the skating community were on board American Airlines.
REPORTER: ... participating in skating events in conjunction. with the US figure skating championship --
COOPER (voice over): Many figure skaters and their families were among those who died on flight 5342.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Shishkova and Naumov.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And they are the best in the World.
COOPER (voice over): Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov were partners on the ice and off, 30 years ago, they became world figure skating champions. They left Russia after that, came to America and thrived, coaching generations of young people in the sport that brought them together.
NANCY KERRIGAN, FORMER OLYMPIC FIGURE SKATER: I've never seen anyone love skating as much as these two. And that's why I think it hurts so much.
[19:45:18]
COOPER (voice over): They are survived by their son, Maxim Naumov, who won fourth place at the US Men's Figure Skating Championships last weekend.
EVGENIA SHISHKOVA, FIGURE SKATER CHAMPION, DIED IN FLIGHT 5342: I like to watch him on the practices because I never watch in competitions. Yes, I can't.
VADIM NAUMOV, FIGURE SKATER CHAMPION, DIED IN FLIGHT 5342: When I watch him compete, I'm like this, you know, hoping that he'll do everything he could.
COOPER (voice over): Maxim was also in Wichita, but returned to DC on a different flight.
And then there were the younger skaters who were in Kansas to train for their future.
CHRISTINE BRENNAN, CNN SPORTS ANALYST: This was the cream of the crop. The future of US figure skating. They could have made an Olympic team. All that hope, all those dreams gone in a second.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Please welcome Spencer Lane.
COOPER (voice over): Sixteen-year-old Spencer Lane had his eye on the Olympics according to his dad.
DOUGLAS LANE, SPENCER LANE'S FATHER: Spencer was our oldest son and was really just kind of a force of nature. He was just a phenom. It's just devastating.
COOPER (voice over): Spencer's mom, Christine, was on the plane, too. She was by his side in life and in death. Spencer's final Instagram story showed the wing of flight 5342, a moment of stillness before the unimaginable.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Would you please, welcome to the ice, Jinna Han.
COOPER (voice over): He was traveling with 13-year-old Jinna Han, who also dreamed of making the Olympic team.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We watched Jinna grow up here. From just a Tiny little tyke. A great performer, a great competitor and off the ice, a great kid.
REPORTER: What year will we be watching you at the Olympics?
JINNA HANN, DIED IN FLIGHT 4572: Probably 2032, I have no idea.
REPORTER: I'll be watching.
JINNA HANN: Thank you.
COOPER (voice over): Eleven-year-old Alydia Livingston and 14-year-old Everleigh were known as the skating sisters, and each had big dreams.
EVERLEIGH LIVINGSTON, DIED IN FLIGHT 5342: My goals are to actually be a part of Team USA and travel around the world.
COOPER (voice over): Their final Instagram post captured a Alydia and Everleigh smiling side-by-side on the ice in Wichita just days before leaving.
Their parents, Donna and Peter were also on board the flight. Donna Livingston sent these pictures to a family friend shortly before takeoff. They all died together.
COOPER: Kim, I'm so sorry for your loss.
COOPER (voice over): Kim Urban and her daughter were friends with the Livingstons and were just with them in Wichita at the same training camp.
KIM URBAN, MOTHER: They were just a big personality family. They were loving. They were thoughtful.
Donna and Peter were extraordinarily supportive parents. They were doing anything for their children. Alydia and Everleigh were very talented skaters and super bubbly, and it's just a tragic loss to our community.
COOPER: How are your kids doing?
URBAN: They're devastated. They've lost friends that they've skated alongside for eight years.
COOPER (voice over): Asra Hussain Raza was the proud daughter of Indian immigrants to this country. Asra graduated from Indiana University not too long ago. She earned honors there and met the love of her life. They married a year and a half ago. Asra was coming home. As a consultant, she was in Wichita helping a hospital reorganize.
HAMAAD RAZA, HUSBAND OF ASRA, DIED IN FLIGHT 5342: I always pick her up from departures and give her a big hug and a kiss. I had dinner waiting at home.
COOPER (voice over): Kiah Duggins was a Civil Rights attorney, a Fulbright scholar, graduate of Harvard Law School. In the fall, she was going to be a Law Professor at Howard University. She was in Wichita visiting her family. They said goodbye to her, never imagining it would be for the last time.
REPORTER: Family and friends of those that were involved in this crash make their way here to Reagan National looking for answers, trying to figure out --
MUNTEAN: To be a family member as somebody you know has been killed in a plane crash, it is a type of horror I would not wish on anybody.
COOPER (voice over): CNN correspondent, Pete Muntean knows the horror all too well.
That's my mom, Miss Nancy Lynn, in the air.
COOPER (voice over): In 2006, Pete was 18 and working as an announcer at an air show where his mom, Nancy Lynn, was flying. She was an experienced aerobatic pilot, but crashed during that air show in front of spectators and Pete. He ran to the crash and found his mom in the burning wreckage.
MUNTEAN: The airplane was on fire. I could hear my mom screaming, but I couldn't do anything. She survived initially and I was able to speak to her in the ambulance, but she died later that night.
COOPER (voice over): Nancy Lynn was 56 years old when she died.
MUNTEAN: So, I really empathize with the families. It's an incredibly hard thing to be thrust into the unknown like that, having to confront the realities of a crash and how this could possibly happen.
COOPER (voice over): When we return, how safe is it to fly.
SULLENBERGER: In spite of how safe aviation has become, we still have a lot of work to do.
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[19:55:20]
COOPER (voice over): Families of the 67 people killed in the mid-air collision in DC have had their lives forever changed. While there will be many lessons to learn from what caused the mid-air collision in Washington, aviation experts say flying on commercial planes is still the safest way to travel.
GOELZ: What I think frightens people is the suddenness of an air crash. The likelihood that fatalities will be heavy and the feeling of powerlessness that comes for passengers. But the reality is that air travel is extraordinarily safe.
O'BRIEN: Your chance of dying on an airliner is one in 11 million -- one in 11 million. That compares to car crash, which is one in 101. So, you are 700 times more likely to die in a car crash than you are on an airliner and yet, people fear flying much more.
COOPER (voice over): Some 45,000 flights take off each day in the US. The skies are crowded, but most flights take off and land without a hitch.
GOELZ: Commercial air travel in the United States, in Canada, in Western Europe, and in much of South America is very safe. And, you know, the number of injuries and fatalities per passenger mile is phenomenally low.
COOPER (voice over): According to researchers at MIT, commercial flights around the world have become roughly twice as safe every decade since the late 1960s.
After the Colgan Air crash in 2009, there were major changes in the aviation industry.
MUNTEAN: This was a regional flight flying into Buffalo. The crew had been working a very long day. They had been fatigued. They got indications that they were entering what's called an aerodynamic stall, and they responded improperly, initially and essentially mushed into the ground. That was a sea change accident.
That was a harbinger for incredible change in aviation. It left an indelible mark on hiring and a huge mark on training and changed the requirements for experience for new airline pilots. COOPER (voice over): More safety regulations have led to fewer crashes. According to the National Transportation Safety Board, there have been 15 major plane crashes in the US since 1982, including last week's tragedy.
O'BRIEN: The NTSB, throughout its history, has looked at aviation accidents and attempted to find the problems that that led to it and make safety recommendations, leading to changes in the way airplanes are designed, the way flight crews are trained, the way air traffic control does its job.
There is no finish line for safety. It's not as if we will wake up one day and say, okay, we have now solved that problem. Safety is an ongoing effort that everybody in the industry has to take on board -- the manufacturers, the airlines, the flight crews, air traffic control.
SULLENBERGER: This is a reminder that in spite of how safe aviation has become, we still have a lot of work to do, and that's going to require more staffing and more money and more focus.
SCHIAVO: You know, over the years with all the accidents I've worked and I've worked many, families of those who are lost in crashes, almost without exception, say the same thing. They say, you know, the one thing that keeps me going is knowing that perhaps my loved one did not die in vain, that maybe change will occur. So, it makes it safer for other people. That's the one thing they always want.
COOPER (voice over): We leave you tonight with some of the names and faces of those who died in the crash in Washington on Wednesday.
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