The UH-60 Black Hawk with the 12th Aviation Battalion was on a training flight when it hit an American Airlines plane with 64 onboard.

Three U.S. Army soldiers were onboard a BlackHawk helicopter that collided with a passenger jet near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, U.S. officials said on Wednesday.

Investigators are beginning to explore how an American Airlines jet and Black Hawk Army helicopter collided over Reagan Washington National Airport.

By The A jet with 60 passengers and four crew members aboard collided Wednesday with an Army helicopter while landing at Ronald Reagan National Airport near Washington, prompting

We are now at the point where we are switching from a rescue operation to a recovery operation,” the DC fire chief said.

There was no immediate word on the cause of the collision, but all takeoffs and landings from the airport were halted as dive teams scoured the site and helicopters from law enforcement agencies across the region flew over the scene in a methodical search for bodies.

US since 2009 This marks the first major commercial crash in the United States since the Colgan Air crash in Buffalo, New York, in 2009, when dozens of people were killed. The last fatality on a plane was when a woman was partially sucked out of a window during a Southwest flight in 2018.