A member of the US figure skating team shared a photo from inside a doomed American Airlines plane shortly before it crashed in Washington DC.
Spencer Lane, 26, uploaded the photo around 7pm ET Wednesday, which appeared to show the jet taxiing on the runway at Wichita Airport in Kansas before it took off for its final flight.
He captioned it ICT -> DCA – the codes for Wichita Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport and Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
Other elite members of the American figure skating team who were expected at the next winter Olympics were also onboard the plane, a bombardier CRJ700.
They were returning home to the DC area after attending a National Development Camp for young skaters in Wichita, Kansas.
Russian figure skaters Yevgenia Skhiskhkova and Vadim Naumov, who mentored Lane, are also believed to have been on the plane.
Their Team USA figure skater son Maxim 23, was at the Wichita camp although it is unclear if he was also on the fateful flight.
Flight 5342, which had 64 people aboard, collided with a US Army Black Hawk helicopter as it made its final approach to Reagan Airport after 9pm ET.
It split in three and plunged into waist-deep water in the icy Potomac River.
So far, 28 bodies have been pulled from the frigid waters with the death toll expected to rise substantially as officials revealed they are switching from rescue to recovery efforts.
Everyone aboard the jet carrying 60 passengers and four crew members is feared dead in what was likely to be the worst U.S. aviation disaster in almost a quarter century, officials said Thursday.
The Black Hawk was on a training sortie, with experts questioning why it flew towards the American Airlines American Eagle jet.
The crash occurred in some of the most tightly controlled and monitored airspace in the world, just over 3 miles south of the White House and the US Capitol.
Less than 30 seconds before the crash, an air traffic controller asked a helicopter if it had the arriving plane in sight. The controller made another radio call to the helicopter moments later: ‘PAT 25 pass behind the CRJ.’
There was no reply. Seconds after that, the two aircraft collided.
The plane’s radio transponder stopped transmitting about 2,400 feet short of the runway, roughly over the middle of the Potomac.
Authorities are conducting a massive search-and-rescue operation.
Inflatable boats were launched into the river and first responders set up light towers from the shore to illuminate the area. Helicopters from law enforcement agencies across the region also flew over the scene in a methodical search for bodies and survivors.
Fatal crashes of commercial aircraft in the U.S. have become a rarity. The last was in 2009 near Buffalo, New York. All 45 passengers and the four crew members were killed when the Bombardier DHC-8 propeller plane crashed into a house. One person on the ground also was killed.
The incident Wednesday recalled the crash of an Air Florida flight that plummeted into the Potomac on January 13, 1982, killing 78 people. That crash was attributed to bad weather.
Officials said during a press conference Thursday morning that they are going from a rescue operation into a recovery one, and the focus is returning the victims’ bodies to their families.
New Secretary of transportation Sean Duffy said said the crash happened in a clear night.
Both aircrafts were in a standard flight pattering when the tragedy occurred, he added.
‘Safety is our expectation. Everyone who flies in American skies expects safety… that didn’t happen last night,’ secretary Duffy said.
‘I know president Trump and his administration, we will not rest until we have answers.’
Duffy assured reporters the US still has ‘the safest airspace in the world.’
He said Duffy said the crash was preventable and alluded to early indicators about what happened, but did not elaborate as the crash is being investigated.
American Airlines CEO Robert Isom also spoke at the press conference and said ‘at this point we don’t know why the military aircraft came into the path’ of the passenger plane.
The mayor of Wichita, Lily Wu, was emotional as she spoke to reporters Thursday morning.
She said they will share the victims’ identities after their families were informed.
American Airlines has set up centers in Washington and in Wichita, Kansas, for people seeking information about family members.
There’s also a hotline for people looking for family and friends: 1-800 679 8215.
