By Rebekah Riess and Lex Harvey

(CNN) — Sixty-seven people are presumed dead after a passenger plane on approach to Reagan National Airport near Washington, DC, collided Wednesday night with a US Army helicopter midair, sending both aircraft into the Potomac River below, officials said.

As of Thursday morning, 27 bodies had been recovered from the plane and one from the helicopter, according to Fire and EMS Chief John A. Donnelly. More had been recovered by the afternoon, a law enforcement source told CNN. There were 64 people on board the plane – which was flying from Wichita, Kansas – and three soldiers in the Army helicopter, according to DC Mayor Muriel Bowser.

“Sadly, there are no survivors,” President Donald Trump said in a news conference at the White House late Thursday morning.

“This was a dark and excruciating night in our nation’s capital and in our nation’s history, and a tragedy of terrible proportions,” Trump said. “As one nation, we grieve for every precious soul that has been taken from us so suddenly.”

Among the dead are American Airlines pilots Jonathan Campos and Samuel Lilley, along with several members of the US figure skating community, according to friends, family and sports groups.

Here’s what we know about the crash – now the subject of a National Transportation Safety Board investigation and the deadliest aviation disaster in the US in more than two decades.

Collision in notoriously busy skies

American Airlines Flight 5342 was due to land at the Reagan National airport Wednesday night when the aircraft – a Bombardier CRJ700 regional jet – collided midair with the Army helicopter as the plane approached Runway 33, according to the Federal Aviation Administration and defense officials.

Flight records showed the passenger plane was expected to land around 9 p.m. But at 8:53 p.m., DC police began receiving calls about “an aircraft crash above the Potomac River,” the agency said.

The crash appears to have been a “very quick, rapid impact” and so far there is no indication that emergency evacuation slides were deployed, National Transportation Safety Board member J. Todd Inman said. He cautioned that the information is still preliminary.

A video of the crash filmed by EarthCam shows what appears to be the helicopter and plane colliding in the sky, resulting in a fiery explosion.

The collision occurred while the helicopter with the 12th Aviation Battalion was conducting a routine training for pilots who take part in “continuity of government” missions, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said at the White House Thursday.

“Tragically, last night, a mistake was made,” Hegseth said. “There was some, some sort of an elevation issue that we have immediately begun investigating at the DOD and Army level.”

The battalion is currently on an operational pause, pending a review, Hegseth said. An investigation will seek to determine whether the helicopter was in the proper corridor and at the right altitude at the time of the collision, he said.

Newly sworn-in Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy had earlier indicated both the helicopter and the American Airlines flight were operating in “standard” flight patterns.

“At this time, we don’t know why the military aircraft came into the path of the PSA aircraft,” American Airlines CEO Robert Isom said Thursday morning.

At the time of the collision, one air traffic controller was working two different tower positions and was handling both local and helicopter traffic, an air traffic control source told CNN. The source described the set-up as not uncommon. However, the New York Times reported that an internal preliminary Federal Aviation Administration report says staffing was “not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic.”

Gasps heard in air traffic control audio

Ari Schulman said he was driving home when he witnessed the collision.

“Initially I saw the plane and it looked fine. Normal. It was right about to head over land, maybe 120 feet above the water,” Schulman told CNN. Seconds later, the plane “was banked all the way to the right… past 90 degrees.”

“I could see the underside of it. It was lit up a very bright yellow, and there was a stream of sparks underneath it” and then everything went dark, he said.

Air traffic controller audio obtained by CNN from LiveATC.net captured air traffic control operators directing the helicopter to pass behind the passenger plane.

An air traffic controller said, “PAT 2-5 do you have the CRJ in sight?”

The controller then said, “PAT 2-5 pass behind the CRJ.”

Additional air traffic control audio shortly before the collision captures the helicopter pilot saying, “PAT 2-5 has aircraft in sight, request visual separation.”

Less than 13 seconds later, the audio then captured audible gasps, including a loud “oooh” in the background apparently from the tower, at the moment of the crash.

All takeoffs and landings were halted at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport until 11 a.m. Thursday, when the airport resumed flight operations. However, airport authorities are directing passengers to check with airlines about canceled or delayed flights.

Deadliest US aviation disaster in more than 20 years

Wednesday’s collision is the deadliest aviation disaster in the US since November 12, 2001, when an American Airlines flight crashed in New York, killing all 260 people on board.

Of those on board Wednesday’s flight, 60 were passengers and four were crew members, American Airlines told CNN.

The Pentagon is withholding the names of the Black Hawk’s three crew members until next of kin are notified, Hegseth said. The crew included a young captain, a staff sergeant and a CW-2 chief warrant officer, he said.

“It was a fairly experienced crew that was doing an annual required night evaluation,” Hegseth said.

Similarly, the two pilots aboard Flight 5342 were not newcomers to complex commercial flights, the company’s CEO said.

“These are experienced pilots,” said Isom. “I know that the captain had … almost six years with PSA (Airlines), and the first officer almost two years.”

Officials in Wichita, Kansas, do not know how many passengers were local residents and how many were traveling through the city, they said at a news conference Thursday. But Kansas Sen. Jerry Moran described the crash as “a very personal circumstance” for Kansans.

“We’re going to know people who are on this flight, know their family members,” Moran said.

The manifest, managed by American Airlines, will be disseminated through their official sources and the National Transportation Safety Board, said Director of Airports in Wichita Jesse Romo.

“Several members” of the US figure skating community were on board the flight after participating in events related to the US Figure Skating Championships in Kansas, the sport’s national governing body confirmed. They included Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, who were the 1994 world figure skating champions in pairs. They represented Russia but moved to the US, where they launched successful coaching careers.

Skater Jinna Han and her mother, Jin Han, were also killed, along with skater Spencer Lane and his mother Christine Lane, according to the Skating Club of Boston.

There were Russians aboard the downed American Airlines flight, Trump said, adding there were “some other countries represented.”

The US State Department has “reached out to the foreign diplomatic community to let them know we will be in contact as soon as we have confirmation via the NTSB of foreign national casualties,” a spokesperson told CNN.

American Airlines shared a toll-free number and said families of people who were onboard Flight 5342 should call 1-800-679-8215 for information. The NTSB also planned to provide a briefing for families on Thursday.

‘Complex’ recovery operation underway

It is believed there are no survivors from the collision, and rescuers must now conduct a recovery operation in the frigid waters of the Potomac River before the federal investigation can get underway, said National Transportation and Safety Board Chair Jennifer Homendy.

“It’s a highly complex operation. The conditions out there are extremely rough,” said Donnelly, the DC Fire and EMS chief. He added that officials are confident they will recover all bodies of those killed.

The mangled wreckage is making the recovery effort particularly difficult for the dive teams, who have had trouble accessing parts of the plane’s fuselage.

It has been an extensive recovery effort described as including essentially every dive team in the area.

The section of the river divers are working in is about 8 feet deep, dark and murky with floating pieces of ice, Donnelly said, adding search efforts will likely take days.

The wreckage of the American Airlines jet was broken apart, said Duffy, the transportation secretary, with the fuselage found in three different sections in waist-deep water.

First responders have not yet retrieved the cockpit voice recorder or the flight data recorder, also known as the black boxes, from the CRJ-700 passenger aircraft, FAA officials told lawmakers.

Recovering those items, which record both cockpit conversations and a slew of data points from the avionics, will be key as the NTSB begins its investigation. The NTSB must also sift through a “very large package of information” provided by the FAA, said Inman, the NTSB member.

The NTSB aims to issue a preliminary report on the collision in the next 30 days and a final report will be issued once the investigation is complete, Inman said.

“Our investigative team will be on scene as long as it takes in order to obtain all of the perishable evidence and all of the fact-finding that is needed to bring us to a conclusion of probable cause,” Inman said.

Concerns over congestion at DCA

The airspace over Reagan National Airport is among the busiest in the country, and passenger planes frequently share the airspace with helicopters.

At least three incidents of close calls involving helicopters near the airport have been reported in the past three years.

On two occasions, passenger planes had to take evasive maneuvers to avoid colliding with a helicopter when trying to land at the airport according to the NASA ASR database, which records self-reported incidents by aviation personnel. The third involved two helicopters.

The reports are filed anonymously, without referring specific airlines. None of the incidents involved the runway approach from Wednesday’s collision.

The most recent report details an incident in April 2024, in which a helicopter came within several hundred feet of a passenger plane trying to land at DCA after air traffic control failed to notify the plane’s pilots of the helicopter’s location.

“Need to have better separation for DCA traffic on the river,” the anonymous air carrier captain reported.

Virginia Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner had previously raised concerns about the dangers of the packed airspace, especially as other senators pushed to add more flights to the airport.

“I’ve been very, very concerned about this very complex airspace,” Kaine said. “The security demands of being the nation’s capital puts some significant restrictions on it.”

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