Source: THE AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

All 64 peo­ple aboard an Amer­i­can Air­lines jet that col­lid­ed with an Army he­li­copter were feared dead in what was like­ly to be the worst U.S. avi­a­tion dis­as­ter in al­most a quar­ter cen­tu­ry, of­fi­cials said Thurs­day.

At least 28 bod­ies, in­clud­ing all three sol­diers who were on the he­li­copter, have been pulled from the icy wa­ters of the Po­tomac Riv­er as re­cov­ery op­er­a­tions con­tin­ue.

There was no im­me­di­ate word on the cause of the col­li­sion. Of­fi­cials said flight con­di­tions were clear as the jet—com­ing from Wi­chi­ta, Kansas—was mak­ing a rou­tine land­ing when the he­li­copter flew in­to its path.

Pas­sen­gers on the flight in­clud­ed a group of fig­ure skaters, their coach­es and fam­i­ly mem­bers who were re­turn­ing from a de­vel­op­ment camp that fol­lowed the U.S. Fig­ure Skat­ing Cham­pi­onships in Wi­chi­ta.

The body of the plane was found up­side down in three sec­tions in waist-deep wa­ter. Some 300 first re­spon­ders were on scene as of ear­ly Thurs­day morn­ing.

Here are the lat­est de­vel­op­ments…

Cler­gy in Wi­chi­ta, Kansas, gath­ered to call for com­pas­sion and heal­ing

By MARGERY A. BECK

The Thurs­day vig­il held in the Wi­chi­ta City Coun­cil cham­bers saw lead­ers from many faiths of­fer prayers and mes­sages of hope for those killed in the crash and their sur­vivors.

“We will get through this, but the on­ly way we will get through this is to­geth­er,” said the Rev. Dr. Pamela, who leads the St. Paul AME Church in Wi­chi­ta.

At White House brief­ing, Trump fo­cused more on cast­ing blame than mourn­ing the crash vic­tims

By WILL WEIS­SERT

The pres­i­dent opened his news con­fer­ence with a mo­ment of si­lence hon­or­ing the crash vic­tims. But then he used most of his time at the podi­um to cast po­lit­i­cal blame rather than call for heal­ing af­ter the tragedy.

With­out ev­i­dence, Trump blamed air traf­fic con­trollers, the he­li­copter pi­lots and De­mo­c­ra­t­ic poli­cies at fed­er­al agen­cies.

“No, I don’t think so,” he said when asked if he was get­ting ahead of him­self.

The news con­fer­ence went near­ly 40 min­utes and Trump said of­fi­cials would be re­leas­ing a full list of vic­tims.

But he al­so said that who was killed wouldn’t af­fect the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to what oc­curred.

“The names of the peo­ple who were on the plane, you think that’s go­ing to make a dif­fer­ence?” Trump asked.

Asked if Amer­i­cans should be wor­ried about fly­ing af­ter the crash, Trump said they should not and that he him­self was not.

“I would not hes­i­tate to fly,” the pres­i­dent said. He added, “Fly­ing is very safe.”

Ac­cord­ing to the FAA, Trump is sched­uled to fly to Palm Beach, Flori­da, where his Mar-a-La­go club is lo­cat­ed, for the week­end on Fri­day.

The crowd­ed air­space around the air­port was well known be­fore the crash, avi­a­tion at­tor­ney says

By HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH

Robert Clif­ford is an avi­a­tion at­tor­ney in­volved in nu­mer­ous air­line dis­as­ter cas­es, in­clud­ing the Li­on Air and Ethiopi­an Air­lines crash­es. He said the De­part­ment of Trans­porta­tion, the De­fense De­part­ment and the FAA should call for an im­me­di­ate, tem­po­rary halt to all mil­i­tary he­li­copters in the air­space used by com­mer­cial air­lines go­ing in­to Rea­gan.

“I can’t get over how stun­ning­ly clear it is that this was a pre­ventable crash and this should nev­er, ever have oc­curred,” Clif­ford said.

“There have been dis­cus­sions for some time about the con­ges­tion as­so­ci­at­ed with that and the po­ten­tial for dis­as­ter. And we saw it come home last night,” Clif­ford said.

The he­li­copter’s in­struc­tor pi­lot, who was serv­ing as pi­lot-in-com­mand, had about 1,000 flight hours

By TARA COPP

That’s ac­cord­ing to Jonathan Kozi­ol, chief of staff for Army avi­a­tion. The in­struc­tor pi­lot was eval­u­at­ing the sec­ond pi­lot — who was al­so qual­i­fied as a pi­lot in com­mand — for that night train­ing flight and the pi­lot who was be­ing eval­u­at­ed had about 500 flight hours, Kozi­ol said.

Crew fly­ing the Army Black Hawk he­li­copter was ‘very ex­pe­ri­enced’

By TARA COPP

And they were not new to the unit or the con­gest­ed fly­ing that oc­curs dai­ly around Wash­ing­ton, D.C., said Jonathan Kozi­ol, chief of staff for Army avi­a­tion.

“Both pi­lots had flown this spe­cif­ic route be­fore, at night. This wasn’t some­thing new to ei­ther one of them,” Kozi­ol said. “Even the crew chief in the back has been in the unit for a very long time, very fa­mil­iar with the area, very fa­mil­iar with the rout­ing struc­ture.”

The max­i­mum al­ti­tude where the Black Hawk was at the time of the crash — along a pub­lished cor­ri­dor called Route 4 — was 200 feet above ground, Kozi­ol said. De­fense Sec­re­tary Pe­te Hegseth said at the White House on Thurs­day that el­e­va­tion seemed to be a fac­tor in the crash.

Kozi­ol said in­ves­ti­ga­tors need to an­a­lyze the flight da­ta be­fore mak­ing any con­clu­sions as to al­ti­tude.

The bod­ies of all three sol­diers who were on the he­li­copter have been re­cov­ered, of­fi­cials say

By LOLI­TA C. BAL­DOR

Of­fi­cials said the re­mains will be at Air Force Mor­tu­ary Af­fairs Op­er­a­tions at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. That of­fice co­or­di­nates the dig­ni­fied trans­fer of fall­en ser­vice mem­bers.

The of­fi­cials spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss de­tails not yet an­nounced. No iden­ti­ties of the crew have been re­leased.

Mul­ti­ple for­mer stu­dents at Loudoun Coun­ty Pub­lic Schools in Vir­ginia are among the vic­tims

By CHRIS­TINE FER­NAN­DO

It was an­nounced by the school dis­trict’s su­per­in­ten­dent.

Men­tal health pro­fes­sion­als will be avail­able at schools, Su­per­in­ten­dent Aaron Spence said in a let­ter to fam­i­lies and staff.

“This unimag­in­able loss has deeply af­fect­ed our com­mu­ni­ty, and with great sor­row, we have learned that mul­ti­ple vic­tims were for­mer LCPS stu­dents,” Spence said.

The pas­sen­ger plane in the col­li­sion was a Bom­bardier CRJ700

By HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH

Bom­bardier is now head­quar­tered in Wi­chi­ta, Kansas, and the plane was cer­ti­fied in the city, said Jim How­ell, a com­mis­sion­er for Sedg­wick Coun­ty, which in­cludes Wi­chi­ta.

He spent two decades work­ing in flight test­ing, in­clud­ing a stint with Bom­bardier in the ear­ly 1990s.

“There’s a lot of con­nec­tions to this plane. There’s a lot of con­nec­tions to Bom­bardier as a com­pa­ny. We have a lot of em­ploy­ees who work for Bom­bardier who are still in­volved in test­ing and main­tain­ing those types of planes here in Wi­chi­ta,” How­ell said.