TRANSCRIPT
A routine trip gone tragically wrong.
All 60 passengers and four crew members on board an American Airlines flight from Kansas never made it to their destination.
It was near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, over the Potomac River, when it collided with a Black Hawk helicopter carrying three soldiers.
Officials say it is believed no-one survived the crash, as rescue teams continue the search for bodies in the river.
An audio recording of communication between air traffic controllers and the pilots suggest there were some concerns about how close the aircraft were getting to each other.
Air traffic controller 1: Did you see that?
Air traffic controller 2: Go around. Maintain 3,000. Go around.
Air traffic controller 3: Black Jack Three, can you return to base? Black Jack Three, proceed directly. I need you to land.
The incident is the deadliest air crash in the United States since 2001.
The identities of those killed are starting to emerge.
They include: 14 members of the figure skating community who had attended a development camp held after the US Figure Skating Championships ended over the weekend in Wichita, Kansas.
Six of the athletes were from the Skating Club of Boston, including skaters Jinna Han and Spencer Lane and their mothers; as well as 1994 pairs world champions-turned coaches Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov.
Skating organisations in Philadelphia and the Washington area say some of their young athletes were also aboard the plane.
Paul George is a member and former president of the US Figure Skating Foundation.
He says the tragedy brings back memories of a deadly 1961 plane crash in Belgium that killed the entire the US figure skating team - who were on their way to the world championships in Prague.
"The sport will rebound. We lost some very, very outstanding coaches of the talent that we lost. In 1961, the same thing we lost some very, very outstanding coaches. But coaches came up and worked harder."
The cause of the disaster was never confirmed.
Former Olympic figure skater Nancy Kerrigan says it is hard to process the grief.
"You don't have to know everybody to feel that connection. We have been through the same thing. That training, that rigorous schedule of falling over and over and somehow picking yourself back up. Which is the main lesson I think learned in skating is you get back up. You keep on trying. And even when it's hard, you get back up and move forward. It's not easy, but it is all what we have to do now together."
Hassan Shahidi, the president and CEO of the Flight Safety Foundation, says the mid-air collision is a rare event - but it will raise questions about whether changes are needed to the current arrangement of passenger planes and military helicopters sharing the same airspace.
"It is important to note that this airspace is a complex airspace and there is really little room for error. It's got military helicopter operations, as well as Coast Guard, as well as National Park Service, and they've been in place for years and years. They have missions to accomplish and to perform in that airspace and they've done it safely over all these years."
Investigators are expected to look into whether the pilots were wearing night vision goggles; if other aircraft and lights created confusion; and whether fatigue of the pilots - or air traffic controllers - played a role in the collision.
Alan Diehl is an aviation safety consultant who worked as a plane crash investigator.
He says fatigue is something that should be examined closely.
"It's always been a very busy airport. And the controllers who work that airport - they're selected because they are good. But still, we need to look at things like fatigue on the part of controllers, the manning levels in the towers that will those will, I'm sure, will be investigated by the safety board to see if there is a problem with overworking the controllers."
The National Transportation Safety Board is leading the investigation into the incident.
The agency's chairwoman, Jennifer Homendy, says remarks from President Donald Trump that put blame on the diversity, equity and inclusion policies of the Federal Aviation Administration are pure speculation - and not based on evidence.
She says the investigation will establish the facts of what happened - and what caused the collision.
"As part of any investigation, we look at the human, the machine and the environment...We have not recovered the flight data recorders yet. We know they're there. They are underwater. This is not unusual for the NTSB. We have many times recovered flight data recorders in water. We have our lab right here that is about a mile, from the NTSB. So it's not unusual. And once we get those will be able to get those read and information from them to be able to provide further information to you."
The agency will file a preliminary report within 30 days.
A final report could take months to complete. It will include recommendations on what should change to prevent such an event from happening again.
