American Airlines Flight 5432
Sixty passengers. Four crewmembers. Sixty-four people.
That’s all I heard the reporter say.
I turned on the TV to see disaster. A plane went down in DC. The reporters were saying lots of words.
Mostly, filler words. Meaningless information. Keep the conversational ball moving. Keep talking even if it doesn’t make sense. No dead air.
But all I heard was: “There were sixty-four people aboard the aircraft.”
Sixty-four.
Sixty-four people. That’s 64 families. That’s 64 grieving moms and dads. Sixty-four bereaved brothers, sisters, wives, husbands, boyfriends, girlfriends, sons, daughters, friends, coworkers, bosses. Sixty-four pets maybe, still waiting at the windowsill.
The plane left Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport in Wichita. Bound for Washington DC. A quick flight. Two hours and 45 minutes, max.
The flight was almost over. Sixty passengers would have been gathering up their crap. Shoving books into backpacks. Using the john one last time. Killing the last of their complimentary coffees.
Crewmembers might have been collecting final remnants of garbage, flashing professional smiles to passengers. In the cockpit, they would have been relaxed since the airport was just ahead.
BOOM.
The plane collided with a US Army Blackhawk helicopter. Midair. Above the midnight water of the Potomac River. And it was all over.
The resulting scene was scary. Like a bad dream. Emergency lights as far as the eye could see. Ambulances, fire trucks, police cruisers, rescue watercraft galore. Hundreds of first responders, diving into icy water to find survivors. The Ptomac looked like a boat parade.
A guy driving home saw the whole thing happen.
“Initially, I saw the plane and it looked fine. Normal. It was right about to head over land, maybe 120 feet above the water…”
He saw the plane bank right. Almost 90 degrees.
“I could see the underside of it. It was lit up a very bright yellow, and there was a stream of sparks underneath it” and then everything went dark.”
Sixty-four people.
Several of the passengers were members of the US figure skating community. There were two Russian figure skaters among them. They had all participated in the US Figure Skating Championships festivities in Kansas.
In the following days, there will be a media hailstorm. You’ll see headlines everywhere. Talking heads will offer purposeless opinions. There will be press conferences, complete with sign-language interpreters, cameras, and gaggles of college-age reporters with iPhones.
We’ll hear about mistakes made. We’ll see high-powered officials in suits stand behind podiums and point fingers. Blame will be placed. Tempers will flare. The buck will be passed. I’m not saying any of this is wrong.
I’m just saying, let’s not forget the 64 souls aboard American Airlines flight 5342.
Just a quick note from me: I didn’t mention military personnel because I wrote this article at 4:45 a.m., and at the time, the military was pretty silent on the issue. They were still looking for survivors. I updated other iterations of the article immediately, but I can’t update an email in your inbox.
Oh my heart aches right now. I am a retired Blackhawk pilot and will not begin to speculate on what happened. Let the investigators do their job before we start pointing fingers. Aviation accidents are rarely caused by one factor and are usually brought about by pilot inattention to conditions, loss of communication, or a myriad of other factors that aligned themselves to create a catastrophic accident. But one thing is certain; there are many families undergoing a massive amount of pain right now. Keep them in your prayers!