An American Airlines jet with 60 passengers and four crew members aboard collided Wednesday with an Army helicopter while coming in for a landing at Ronald Reagan National Airport near Washington and multiple people were killed. Fatal crashes of commercial aircraft in the U.S. have become a rarity.
The deadliest recent crash was in 2009 near Buffalo, N.Y. 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 collision Wednesday of the Bombardier CRJ-701 twin-engine plane and UH-60 Blackhawk occurred over the Potomac River and the aircraft fell into the water.
In 1982 an Air Florida flight crashed into the Potomac and killed 78. Here are some of the deadliest commercial plane crashes in the U.S. since the Air Florida disaster, according to reports from the National Transportation Safety Board:
- Feb. 12, 2009: A Colgan Air plane crashed near Buffalo, N.Y., killing everyone aboard the Bombardier DHC-8 propeller plane, including 45 passengers, two pilots and two flight attendants. Another person on the ground also died, bringing the total death toll to 50.
- Aug. 27, 2006: A Comair aircraft crashed when taking off in Lexington, Ky., after it left from the wrong runway and ran off the end. Two crew members and 47 passengers were killed.
- Nov. 12, 2001: Just after takeoff, an American Airlines flight crashed into a residential area of Belle Harbor, N.Y. All 260 people aboard the plane were killed.
Sept. 11, 2001: Nearly 3,000 people were killed as 19 al-Qaida hijackers seized control of four jetliners, sending two of the planes into New York’s World Trade
