An American Airlines jet carrying 60 passengers and four crew members collided on Wednesday night with an Army helicopter while landing at Ronald Reagan National Airport near Washington DC.
The crash prompted a large search-and-rescue operation in the nearby Potomac River.
There were multiple fatalities, according to a person familiar with the matter, but the precise number of victims was unclear as rescue crews hunted for any survivors.
Three soldiers were onboard the helicopter, an Army official said.
There was no immediate word on the cause of the collision, but all take-offs and landings from the airport were halted as dive teams scoured the site and helicopters from law enforcement agencies across the region flew over the scene in a methodical search for bodies.
Images from the river showed boats around the partly submerged wing and what appeared to be the mangled wreckage of the plane’s fuselage.
“We are going to recover our fellow citizens,” District of Columbia mayor Muriel Bowser said at a sombre news conference at the airport in which she declined to say how many bodies had been recovered.
A helicopter uses its searchlight as it flies above the Potomac River near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (Alex Brandon/AP)
The person who told the Associated Press that there had been multiple deaths was not authorised to publicly discuss details of the investigation and spoke to on condition of anonymity.
President Donald Trump said he has been briefed on the “terrible accident”.
In a statement late on Wednesday, Mr Trump thanked first responders for their “incredible work,” noting that he was “monitoring the situation and will provide more details as they arise”.
“May God Bless their souls,” he added.
Boats work the scene in the Potomac River near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (Alex Brandon/AP)
American Airlines confirmed 60 passengers and four crew members were aboard the passenger jet.
Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas said “when one person dies it’s a tragedy, but when many, many, many people die it’s an unbearable sorrow”.
Washington Fire and EMS chief John A Donnelly said at the early Thursday news conference that conditions are “extremely rough for responders”, with cold weather and intense wind.
The Potomac River is about eight feet deep where the aircraft crashed after their collision.
People arrive to check on passengers at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Arlington, Virginia (Julio Cortez/AP)
“The water is dark. It is murky,” Mr Donnelly said.
Asked if there are any survivors, Mr Donnelly responded: “We don’t know yet. But we’re working.”
Inflatable rescue boats were launched into the nearby Potomac River from a point near the airport along the George Washington Parkway, just north of the airport.
Vice President JD Vance also encouraged followers on the social media platform X to “say a prayer for everyone involved”.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced the airport would be closed until at least 5am on Friday.
The agency said the mid-air crash occurred around 9pm local time when a regional jet that had departed from Wichita, Kansas, collided with a military helicopter on a training flight while on approach to an airport runway. It occurred in some of the most tightly controlled and monitored airspace in the world, just over three miles south of the White House and the Capitol.
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In audio from the air traffic control tower around the time of the crash, a controller is heard asking the helicopter: “PAT25 do you have the CRJ in sight,” in reference to the passenger aircraft.
“Tower did you see that?” another pilot is heard calling seconds after the apparent collision.
Investigators will try to piece together the aircrafts’ final moments before their collision, including contact with air traffic controllers as well as a loss of altitude by the passenger jet.
American Airlines flight 5342 was inbound to Reagan National at an altitude of about 400 feet and a speed of about 140 miles per hour when it suffered a rapid loss of altitude over the Potomac River, according to data from its radio transponder.
The Canadian-made Bombardier CRJ-701 twin-engine jet was manufactured in 2004 and can be configured to carry up to 70 passengers.
A few minutes before landing, air traffic controllers asked the arriving commercial jet if it could land on the shorter Runway 33 at Reagan National and the pilots said they were able.
Controllers then cleared the plane to land on Runway 33. Flight tracking sites showed the plane adjust its approach to the new runway.
Less than 30 seconds before the crash, an air traffic controller asks the helicopter if it has the arriving plane in sight. The controller makes another radio call to the helicopter moments later: “PAT 25 pass behind the CRJ.” Seconds after that the two aircraft collide.
The plane’s radio transponder stopped transmitting about 2,400 feet short of the runway, roughly over the middle of the river.
The tower immediately began diverting other aircraft from Reagan.
Video from an observation camera at the nearby Kennedy Centre showed two sets of lights consistent with aircraft appearing to join in a fireball.
The crash is serving as a major test for two of the Trump administration’s newest agency leaders. Pete Hegseth, sworn in days ago as defence secretary, posted on social media that his department was “actively monitoring” the situation that involved an Army helicopter.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, just sworn in earlier this week, said in a social media post that he was “at the FAA HQ and closely monitoring the situation”.
Reagan National is located along the Potomac River, just southwest of the city. It is a popular choice because it is much closer than the larger Dulles International Airport, which is deeper in Virginia.
Depending on the runway being used, flights into Reagan can offer passengers spectacular views of landmarks like the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the National Mall and the US Capitol. It is a postcard-worthy welcome for tourists visiting the city.
The incident recalled the crash of an Air Florida flight that plummeted into the Potomac on January 13 1982, that killed 78 people. That crash was attributed to bad weather.
The last fatal crash involving a U. commercial airline occurred in 2009 near Buffalo, New York.