A passenger jet collided Wednesday with an Army helicopter while landing at Ronald Reagan National Airport near Washington, prompting a large search-and-rescue operation in the nearby Potomac River.
I'm hearing it was a small passenger jet with about 60 souls aboard. Don't know how many were on the Blackhawk. 
Incredible.
Looks like nothing but shrapnel scattered into the Potomac.
They've pulled out 4 (apparent) survivors.
Watching...
Yeah the reports in RVA mentioned it as a "small plane" has crashed in the Potomac. An hour later it's becoming clear it's much worse than a Cessna or something as described earlier.
It was a CRJ700 that collided with a UH60 Blackhawk. The CRJ was on final approach and it appears the helicopter flew into its path.
There is a webcam video taken from the Kennedy Center that shows the collision.
https://www.twz.com/air/h-60-black-hawk-collides-with-crj700-airliner-over-potomac-river
Absolutely horrible 
PSA CRJ700 on short final for 33 and an Army Blackhawk. I've seen one statement that indicated the plane split in two and the helicopter is upside down in the river.
ADS-B data seems to show the CRJ where it was supposed to be. The helo traffic over the Potomac is extremely heavy, and it's all in tight quarters. It would not have taken much for the Blackhawk to stray into the pattern.
Much too early to say, but there could be controller issues here as well. There have been a couple of incidents at DCA in the last year:
My good friend is actually receiving some of the bodies as they're being recovered. Her job and home is literally right on the river across from DCA. She was called in immediately just hours after working. It's pretty hectic.
Oh, wow. This really causes my stomach to flip. I don't know how many times I've flown that river visual to RWY 1 and been told at the last minute to circle to 33. It's fun in the daytime, but at night it's hectic at best. It's very hard to pick traffic out of all of the other lights around there. Lots of roads, so tons of moving lights that make it even harder to spot air traffic. I'm wondering if the Army crew thought they had the jet in sight but were looking at the wrong one. Like blancolirio said in the video, the CRJ crew would have been totally focused on making the turn at low altitude and getting ready to land on a short runway, and at that altitude, the chopper was probably hidden from them by all of the city lights in the background. My thoughts go out to everyone involved.
Apparently these are the flight paths, Black Hawk in black.
Now they say they've recovered 27 bodies and expect no survivors, even though there were reports of 4 people being alive.
Oh man. I hate to see this. It immediately brings back memories of the 1982 crash in the Potomac.
Wow, that's terrible.
My friend was telling me her husband's company was checking on people all night last night. He works for a NonProfit that meets in DC every month, he works from home himself. But different groups of that NP meet at different times, so they were checking on everyone in the company to see if anyone was flying in last night. So far so good.
Officials are now saying there are no survivors.
Tragic. If it's any solace - I suspect they didn't suffer.
I hear they like to use the river as a bit of an airway for noise abatement reasons, but the thought of crossing low altitude traffic in front of the approach end of a runway seems nuts to me!
There is a Big Sky Theory in aviation, which essentially says that two airplanes in the 3D space of the sky are extremely unlikely to collide. It's very much true... but... the approach to a airport is kind of an exception (both aircraft going for the same small path or spot). This is rather unique in that in that they were an different headings, which makes even this rather unlikely and kind of dumb luck.
I also thought of the other Potomac crash (I think that one was the result of icing on takeoff)
Dumb luck and airplanes ^ don't sound good together.
From what I've been able to discover, the helo was on something called "Route 4," which is one of the helicopter (edit) flight corridors in DC (FAA chart here). That route runs the east side of the river and is at or below 200AGL. If the ADS-B data is correct, it suggests the helo was too high. While the helo crew claimed they had the CRJ in sight and were maintaining visual separation, it is possible they were referring to another aircraft and never saw the accident aircraft.
Flying into DCA always puckers me up, especially approaching from the north as this flight did. You can practically look in the windows of the office buildings.
Absolutely horrible.
The amount of people I've read on social media that think this is somehow intentional is beyond the pale.
In reply to z31maniac :
There is a subset of the populace with the mental quirk that they don't believe in random chance, or accidents, or that people can make dumb mistakes, but that everything that happens must be by intentional means.
It's SO funny to call them out on this. "Wife got a flat tire? So, you sabotaged her car?"
In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :
Social media has taken all the kooks and mainstreamed them.
Updated VASAviation video with helo comms audible. If the tracks shown are accurate, the helo was west of the assigned Route 4 airspace.
Pete. (l33t FS) said:In reply to z31maniac :
There is a subset of the populace with the mental quirk that they don't believe in random chance, or accidents, or that people can make dumb mistakes, but that everything that happens must be by intentional means.
It's SO funny to call them out on this. "Wife got a flat tire? So, you sabotaged her car?"
Mental quirk is much more tactful than how I would describe it. But I'm also not looking to help extend the patio.
Just to give you an idea of what we may be looking at here. Quick note: I DO NOT KNOW what runway the plane was landing on, but I am guessing it was probably 1, which appears to be the only ILS (instrument landing system) equipped runway. Here is a pic of the special airway route o2 linked to (airport clearly seen at center):
I believe the overlined numbers next to the Routes indicate maximum altitudes(?). Note area south of airport (200 ft). Here is the ILS approach plate for runway 1 (airport is in center, approach is from the bottom):
The bottom diagram shows the target altitudes for the markers (shown in main diagram) as you pass over them. It's a bit hard to overlay the two, but as you can see, those are some pretty close numbers. E.g. note the JARAL marker, which is 2.9 miles south of the airport, over the river has a target altitude to stay on the glide slope of 620 ft, and decending from there.
Normally, aircraft are kept WELL apart from each other, even with the Open Sky theory in effect.
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