WASHINGTON — An American Airlines jet carrying 60 passengers and four crew members collided Wednesday with an Army helicopter while landing at Ronald Reagan National Airport near Washington, prompting a large search-and-rescue operation in the nearby Potomac River.
Three soldiers were onboard the helicopter, an Army official said.
There was no immediate word on the cause of the collision, but all takeoffs 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.
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As the massive search operation continues, it’s worth noting that President Donald Trump signed an executive order called Keeping Americans Safe in Aviation last Tuesday.
On the president’s social media platform Truth Social, he wrote that the bad situation looks like it could have been avoided.
“The airplane was on a perfect and routine line of approach to the airport. The helicopter was going straight at the airplane for an extended period of time. It is a CLEAR NIGHT, the lights on the plane were blazing, why didn’t the helicopter go up or down, or turn. Why didn’t the control tower tell the helicopter what to do instead of asking if they saw the plane. This is a bad situation that looks like it should have been prevented. NOT GOOD!!!,” the president wrote.
Trump’s order emphasizes the need to hire more Federal Aviation Administration employees. It also instructs the FAA to end all DEI hiring practices to accomplish that goal. We have reported in the past about the FAA’s push to hire more air traffic controllers. In September, the FAA said it had reached hiring goals for the fiscal year by bringing on more than 1,800 new air traffic controlers.
The FAA says it’s the largest number of hires the organization has made in nearly a decade.
That shortage of air traffic controllers is one of the reasons we saw local lawmakers pushing back against adding more flights to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA). It already has the busiest commercial runways in the United States.
Still, five new roundtrip flight routes were approved for DCA in October as part of the Reauthorization Act. Those flights are not set to start until March.
RELATED: 5 new flights coming to DCA as part of Reauthorization Act