Before American Eagle Flight 5342 took off from Wichita, Kansas, bound for Washington D.C., 14-year-old Spencer Lane, an up-and-coming figure skater, took a photo of the plane stretching out over the tarmac as the sun dipped below the greyish-blue sky. Little did he know that this would be the last farewell to the group of passengers that included his group of friends from the US Figure Skating Championships and a development camp for young athletes.
Flight 5342, a near-full Bombardier CRJ700, touched down at 8:46 p.m., but never got the chance to land. With 60 passengers and four crew members on board, it clashed mid-air with a US Army Black Hawk helicopter carrying a three-person crew for a nighttime training exercise. A giant fireball erupted above the Potomac River, shrouding the area in chaos and despair. The two planes plunged into the river, all on board died.
The crew of Flight 5342 and the Army soldiers were seasoned, with a wealth of experience flying and operating under tight control spaces. The same could be said for the jet’s pilots. The incident may have been as a result of a misread or miscalculation rather than an absolute error, reports suggest. Audio recordings from the air traffic controller’s conversation before the crash may hold some answer.
In addition to the many lives lost that night, witnesses described hearing ‘flares go up in the air’ immediately before the devastating collision. Several pilots in separate aircraft contacted control towers to request information about a possible accident they had witnessed while flying over the area. Staffing issues during the air traffic control operation of the airport is also under review.
In Washington D.C. and across America, a shocked nation is slowly coming to grips with the new reality of over 40 reported fatalities in an aviation disaster eerily reminiscent of the Tenerife disaster which occurred in the 1970s. Wreckage retrieval efforts are already underway, yet the sheer nature of the aftermath has brought authorities to set up a makeshift morgue amidst the familiar location of plane watches, Gravelly Point Park.
