American Airlines flight catches fire at Denver airport
(ra-photos/Getty Images)
(DENVER) — An American Airlines plane caught fire at Denver International Airport in Colorado on Thursday, sending passengers down emergency slides and onto the wing of the aircraft. Twelve were people being taken to the hospital with minor injuries, airport officials said.
The Boeing 737-800 plane was diverted to Denver shortly after departing from Colorado Springs, Colorado. While the plane was taxiing to the gate, the engine caught fire, and its passengers evacuated.
The incident, which sent smoke billowing across the tarmac, took place at approximately 5:15 p.m., local time.
There were 172 passengers and six crew members aboard AA Flight 1006.
All passengers were able to exit the plane.
American Airlines told ABC News that passengers evacuated the plane through emergency slides, the overwing exit and some onto the jet bridge.
A statement from Denver International Airport said 12 people were taken to the hospital with minor injuries.
The plane was traveling from Colorado Springs, Colorado, to Dallas, Texas, when it was diverted to Denver after the “crew reported engine vibrations,” according to the Federal Aviation Authority.
The plane diverted after about 20 minutes into the flight and was in the air for about an hour before it landed.
In an earlier statement to ABC News, American Airlines said, “We thank our crew members, DEN team and first responders for their quick and decisive action with the safety of everyone on board and on the ground as the priority.”
The airline also said that it was arranging for a replacement aircraft to take passengers the rest of the way to the intended destination, Dallas Fort-Worth.
Emergency units respond to airplane wreckage in the Potomac River near Ronald Reagan Washington Airport on January 30, 2025 in Arlington, Virginia. An American Airlines flight from Wichita, Kansas collided with a helicopter while approaching Ronald Reagan National Airport. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Fourteen figure skaters — including some young athletes called the “rising stars” of the sport — are among the victims of the first major commercial plane crash in the United States since 2009, officials said.
The Skating Club of Boston was devastated by the crash, according to Doug Zeghibe, the club’s CEO and executive director, who said six of the victims were from the Boston club, including two coaches, two teenage athletes and two moms of athletes.
“Our sport and this club have suffered a horrible loss with this tragedy,” Zeghibe said. “Skating is a tight-knit community where parents and kids come together six or seven days a week to train and work together. Everyone is like family. We are devastated and completely at a loss for words.”
Zeghibe identified the skaters from the Skating Club of Boston as Jinna Ha and Spencer Lane. Ha’s mother, Jin Han, and Lane’s mother, Christine Lane, were also on board.
He identified the two coaches as Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov. The two were 1994 World Pair Champions who joined the club in 2017, Zeghibe said.
“Six is a horrific number for us but we’re fortunate and grateful it wasn’t more than six,” Zeghibe said. “This will have long reaching impacts for our skating community.”
The figure skaters and coaches were returning from a training camp held in conjunction with the recent U.S. national championships in Wichita, Kansas. They were aboard the American Airlines flight that collided with a Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan National Airport on Wednesday evening, officials said. No survivors were expected in the crash, officials said Thursday. There were 64 people aboard the plane and three in the helicopter, according to officials.
Natalya Gudin, the wife of Alexandr Kirsanov, a coach of two youth ice skaters on board the flight, said she has “lost everything” in the crash. Gudin, also a skating coach, decided to stay home in Delaware while Kirsanov flew to Kansas for the development camp. She says she spoke with her husband as he boarded the flight on Wednesday.
“I lost my husband, I lost my students, I lost my friends,” Gudin told ABC News. “I need my husband back. I need his body back.”
The University of Delaware said Sasha Kirsanov, a former figure skating club coach, was also on the airplane, along with two young skaters who were also members of the club.
“Our hearts go out to the families and friends of all of the victims of this horrible tragedy,” said President of the University of Delaware Dennis Assanis.
The U.S. Figure Skating community has been struck by tragedy in a plane crash before. An entire U.S. figure skating team died in a plane crash on Feb. 15, 1961. The plane, Sabena Flight 548, was carrying the team to the World Figure Skating Championships in Prague, Czechoslovakia. Along with the team, 16 family members, coaches and friends of the skaters died in the crash.
“Like today, 1961 was a tragic moment, it was the day the music stopped, very much like this,” said longtime member of the Skating Club of Boston Paul George during a Thursday press conference. “It was a very vivid reminder of 1961. My wife tapped me on the shoulder at 6:30 (a.m.) and told me, much as my father had done 64 years ago at about the same time of day.”
Olympic gold medalist Brian Boitano told ABC News he knew the two Russian skating coaches, Naumov and Shishkova, and had handed the fourth-place award to the pair’s son at the U.S. championships in Wichita last weekend.
“We are a really close-knit community. The skaters — we are all connected. So when something happens to one of us, it reverberates through everyone.”
The U.S. figure skating world has emerged from the shadows of tragedy before, he said.
“From the 1961 plane crash, we did rise from that,” Boitano said, adding “It took years to build.”
During a press conference Thursday, Olympic medalist and renowned figure skater Nancy Kerrigan fought back tears as she explained the impact of the crash on the skating community, urging others to “tell people around you that you love them, because you just never know.”
“Skating teaches you the main lesson in life: You get back up,” Kerrigan said. “Even when it’s hard, even when you’re crying, even when you’re hurt. And that’s what we all have to do now — together.”
Oklahoma City figure skating coach Jackie Brenner was in Wichita with the skaters, coaches and officials who later boarded the flight.
“I was there on Sunday at a coaching workshop, which was the first day of U.S. figure skating development camp as they were coming into their two days of training,” Brenner said. The camp draws the sport’s “rising stars,” she said.
“That’s our next generation for U.S. figure skating,” she told ABC News, adding, “You can just imagine how devastated U.S. figure skating community is.”
CEO of U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee Sarah Hirshland said the young skaters who were lost “represented the bright future of Team USA, embodying the very essence of what it means to represent our country — perseverance, resilience and hope.”
“They were remarkable young people and talents, passionately pursuing their dreams, and they will forever hold a cherished place in the Team USA family,” Hirshland said in a statement. “We extend our sincerest condolences during this unimaginable time.”
The last commercial plane crash in the U.S. happened on Feb. 12, 2009, when Colgan Air Flight 3407 crashed during landing near Buffalo Niagara International Airport, killing all 49 people onboard.
(BUTLER COUNTY, Pa.) — First responders from Butler County, Pennsylvania – the site of the first assassination attempt on Donald Trump during the presidential campaign – played a pivotal and personal part in his run for the White House.
Now, those responders who helped him in the immediate aftermath are being given a special role at Monday’s inauguration, featured as the first group to walk in the Inauguration Day parade following a contingent from the U.S. Army.
The group, consisting of Pennsylvania State and local Police, County Sheriffs, Emergency Services Unit/SWAT Team, Fire/Rescue, EMS, 911 Radio Dispatch, Hospital personnel, will march together to honor the memory of their fellow Butler County resident and community First Responder, the late Corey Comperatore.
Comperatore, a 10-year U.S. Army Reserve veteran and Past Fire Chief of the Buffalo Township, was killed during the assassination attempt while shielding his family from the gunfire.
On July 13, 2024, Butler County response teams initially treated over 250 heat-stricken spectators ahead of an open field rally at Butler Farm Show Grounds.
Later that day, several first responders heroically leaped into action after gunshots struck then-candidate Trump, and Trump supporters Corey Comperatore, David Dutch and James Copenhagen, and treated these and their other patients, while still in the line of fire.
The Butler County parade formation will be led by the Pennsylvania State Police Honor Guard.
“We are forever changed by the devastating loss of our fellow first responder Corey Comperatore. We remember past Fire Chief Comperatore today and forever, as we honor others, including President Trump, David Dutch and James Copenhaver who survived this murderous attack,” Butler County First Responders said in a statement.
“We hope all Americans will pause today to remember the bravery and sacrifice of their own first responders and police, the expertise of their 911 dispatchers, and the skill of their local hospital emergency and medical staff and emergency management agencies.”
Trump returned to the site in October, suggesting he had “an obligation” to do so.
“This field is now a monument to the valor of our first responders, to the resilience of our fellow citizens, and to the sacrifice of a loving and devoted father, a really great man,” Trump said during his return rally.
“All who have visited this hallowed place will remember what happened here, and they will know of the character and courage that so many incredible American patriots have shown and know, and they know it at a level never seen before,” he said.
The special honor for the Butler first responders comes after, during his first inaugural in 2017, Trump’s parade also highlighted police and military personnel with a representative from every branch of the military joining him.
However, Trump’s second inaugural parade could look different as officials warn of a heightened general security threat — on top of increased security for him personally in the wake of the two assassination attempts on his life during the campaign.
“Threat actors with election-related grievances likely view the Inauguration as their last opportunity to influence the election results through violence. The motives of some recent assailants are not entirely coherent or remain unknown, highlighting the difficulty in predicting lone offender violence,” officials warned in a joint threat assessment obtained by ABC News.
The decision on whether to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue, and for how long, has usually been left up to the discretion of the incoming president along with input from the Secret Service.
In 2017, Trump, along with his wife Melania and youngest son Barron, got out of their motorcade and walked a short distance during two different moments of the parade: near what was then the Trump International Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue and then again from the Treasury Department into the White House.
(WASHINGTON) — While driving home Wednesday night on the George Washington Parkway near Ronald Reagan National Airport, Ari Shulman said a “spray of sparks” in the sky caught his attention as he watched in horror the midair collision between American Airlines Flight 5342 and a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter unfold.
Authorities said Thursday that the crash shattered the regional commuter airplane into pieces as it and the military helicopter plummeted into the icy Potomac River, killing everyone aboard both aircraft — 67 victims combined.
“I looked back and [the plane] was banked all the way to the right … it was illuminated yellow underneath and there was a spray of sparks on the underside,” Schulman told ABC News chief national correspondent Byron Pitts.
Security video released shortly after the crash confirmed Shulman’s description of the first major U.S. air disaster in nearly 16 years.
Video footage showed Flight 5342 with 60 passengers and four crew members aboard making its final approach to Reagan National when it was struck by a Black Hawk helicopter traveling south with a flight crew of three.
“I knew something was very wrong because it was very, very close to the ground — banked all the way to the right,” Shulman of Alexandria, Virginia, said.
He said he glanced at the road for just a moment.
“I looked back again and it was gone,” Shulman said. “I didn’t see any crash into the ground. I didn’t see a fireball, an explosion, or flames.”
Fire Chief John Donnelly of the Washington D.C. Fire Department said at a news conference Thursday morning that an American Airlines plane, operated by its subsidiary PSA Airlines, was found “inverted” in three pieces in waist-high water of the Potomac. He said the helicopter was discovered nearby.
“At this point, we don’t believe there are any survivors from this accident,” Donnelly said.
Donnelly said the search-and-rescue mission was not a search-and-recovery operation. He said 27 bodies had been recovered from the airplane and one from the helicopter.
Donnelly said that at 8:48 p.m. local time, the control tower at Reagan National sent out an alert of a plane crash.
“Very quickly, the call escalated,” Donnelly said.
He said 300 first responders raced to the river in a desperate attempt to find survivors, which would prove futile. Within 10 minutes, the first emergency unit arrived on the grisly scene, surveying the wreckage of both aircraft in the Potomac River.
“The water that we’re operating in is about 8 feet deep,” Donnelly told reporters at the somber early-morning briefing. “There is wind … pieces of ice out there, so it’s just dangerous and hard to work in. And because there’s not a lot of lights, you’re out there searching every square inch of space to see if you can find anybody.”
He added, “Divers are doing the same thing in the water. The water is dark, it is murky, and that is a very tough condition for them to dive in.”
Meanwhile, the medical staffs of three major Washington, D.C., hospitals said they were prepared to treat victims, but as the minutes turned into hours, no ambulances arrived from the crash site with patients.
From the banks of the Potomac, search helicopters were seen probing the water with searchlights as fire boats made trips back and forth through the icy Potomac, transporting what appeared to be debris from the crash, including suitcases.
Inside, the usually bustling airport was eerily quiet Wednesday evening. The departure and arrivals boards were nearly blank.
Jack Potter, president and CEO of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, said some family members were waiting to pick up loved ones before the crash, and American Airlines had set up a center in the airline’s lounge for family members.
