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6m ago / 11:13 PM EST

64 passengers and crew on jet that crashed, American Airlines says

Phil Helsel

There were 60 passengers and four crew members on board the plane that crashed after a mid-air collision near Reagan Airport, American Airlines said.

“Our concern is for the passengers and crew on board the aircraft. We are in contact with authorities and assisting with emergency response efforts,” the airline said in a statement.

American Eagle Flight 5342 was approaching the Washington, D.C., area airport when the collision with a helicopter happened around 9 p.m., officials said.

The flight was en route from from Wichita, Kansas, and was operated by PSA Airlines. The plane is a CRJ-700, American Airlines said.

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4m ago / 11:15 PM EST

‘Like a giant Roman candle’: Eyewitness gives account of crash
Zoë Richards

An eyewitness who was driving home near the airport gave an account of what he saw at the time of the crash.

“You can always see these planes lined up to land. I always look at them when I’m driving home because it’s just a really interesting, kind of an elegant sight,” Ari Schulman told NBC Washington, adding that he was driving along the George Washington Parkway, which runs right by the airport.

Schulman said he saw what looked like a plane roughly 120 to 150 feet in the air preparing to land but then looked back moments later and saw that “it looked very, very wrong.”

“It looked to me like a giant Roman candle, sparks shooting from the head of the plane down to the tail. I saw that for about two seconds,” Schulman said, adding that he initially wondered whether he had hallucinated the crash, but then he began seeing emergency vehicles.