They were just minutes away from landing at Ronald Reagan National Airport near Washington, D.C., when their plane collided with an Army helicopter over the Potomac River.
In a horrible flash captured on video and seen around the world, the fates of all 60 passengers and four crew members aboard American Eagle Flight 5342 and the three soldiers on the Black Hawk helicopter were sealed.
“At this point, I don’t believe we are going to find any survivors,” Washington, D.C., Fire Chief John Donnelly said Thursday after a frantic but futile search for survivors of the Wednesday night collision.
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The doomed plane’s passengers included more than a dozen people returning from a training camp following the 2025 U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Wichita, Kansas, where the flight originated.
The Pentagon did not release the names of the three people aboard the downed Black Hawk, but Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said it was a “fairly experienced crew.” One of the crew members was a woman, according to two U.S. military officials.
The airline has not released the names of its crew members, although the stepmother of First Officer Sam Lilley confirmed to NBC News that he was on the plane that went down.
“We will want to tell his story eventually,” Sheri Lilley said. “He was a wonderful person.”
Ian Epstein was a flight attendant on the plane, his sister, Robbie Epstein Bloom, confirmed.
“He loved being a flight attendant because he truly enjoyed traveling and meeting new people,” Bloom said in a statement. “But his true love was his family. He was a father, a stepfather, a husband and a brother! He will be truly missed.”
As dawn broke Thursday and the rescue mission became a grim recovery effort, the stories of some of the other victims of the first commercial plane crash in the United States since 2009 began to emerge.
Spencer Lane and Jinna Han, both 16, were promising young figures skaters at the The Skating Club of Boston in Norwood, Massachusetts. They were aboard the plane with their mothers, Christine Lane and Jin Han.
“Six is a horrific number for us, but we’re fortunate and grateful it wasn’t more than six,” club CEO Doug Zeghibe told reporters gathered at the club.
Also killed was 12-year-old Brielle Beyer and her mother, Justyna Magdalena Beyer, who lived in a Virginia suburb of Washington. They were in Wichita so Brielle could sharpen her skating skills.
“We’re heartbroken,” Justyna Beyer’s sister, Mariola Witkowska, said. “We’re just in shock.”
Brielle, she said, had been skating “her whole life,” and her mother shared her passion.
“Brielle and ice skating was pretty much her life,” Witkowska said of her sister.
Among those killed were Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov who trained young skaters at the Boston skating club, Zeghibe said.
Together, the two won a 1994 world championship in pairs figure skating. They also competed in the Olympics twice, placing fifth at the 1992 Winter Games in Albertville, France, and fourth at the 1994 Winter Games in Lillehammer, Norway.
But their pride and joy was their 24-year-old son, Maxim Naumov, who had competed in Wichita and had taken an earlier flight home, Zeghibe said.
Shishkova, who had been coaching at the club for more than 20 years, was too nervous to watch her son compete, Zeghibe said. That left Naumov to cheer his son on as he came in fourth place.
