Video appears to show American Airlines flight’s collision with a US Army helicopter near DC

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This article was published 30/01/2025 (250 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A grainy snippet of video footage taken in the dark of night, seemingly by an airport CCTV camera, appears to show the fatal mid-air collision of an American Airlines passenger plane and a military Black Hawk helicopter.

American Airlines Flight 5342 was on approach at Ronald Reagan National Airport near Washington, D.C., the plane showing up on the video as a fuzzy ball of white light in the black 9 p.m. skies of the U.S. capital.

With touch-down imminent, the 64 passengers and crew aboard were surely looking forward to disembarking and some rest after flying from Wichita, Kansas.

In the first moments of the video footage, nothing seems untoward. It shows scenes one would expect from any bustling airport — including another passenger aircraft taxiing in the foreground.

A bright light flashing cherry red atop that plane’s fuselage as it maneuvered carefully past a retractable gangway was the only dash of color in the otherwise largely monochrome picture — before the angry fireball that subsequently punctures the night sky.

Another light spells disaster

In the video’s next second: the unexpected. A flickering dot of light appears from the left of the frame, at first so faint that it might be mistaken for a distant star.

But it is moving. Quickly, too. The dot appears to be the Army UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter, on a training exercise with a crew of three soldiers aboard.

The tiny smudge of light from the helicopter speeds ever-closer to the AA flight, but then flickers off and disappears for a tiny fraction of a second. Has it sensed danger and veered off the collision course?

The next moment brings the fateful answer: Unfortunately, no.

In the dark, a spreading ball of flame

The helicopter light-dot reappears, still racing toward the larger bright white of the passenger plane.

Then, an explosion — a spreading fireball of yellow and orange that suddenly flares in the darkness like an unnatural sun before starting to fade.

Where, just milliseconds earlier, there had been only two moving lights in the sky — the plane’s and the helicopter’s — now there are many: debris scattering and tumbling through the darkness.

In the foreground, the other untouched passenger plane still trundles on, seemingly unaware as what appears to be the largest chunk of wreckage is falling fast and uncontrolled behind it.

The aircraft plummeted into the Potomac River, where the fuselage was found upside down in three sections in waist-deep water, officials said.

Everyone on board was feared dead and officials said the bodies of all three soldiers on the helicopter are also among those that have been recovered.