On January 29, an American Airlines plane crashed into an Army Black Hawk helicopter, which landed in Potomac River. The crash killed 67 people, with no survivors. They’re were sixty-four people on the plane and three soldiers on the helicopter. At least fifty-five victims have been positively identified (New York Times).The incident is still under investigation, but flight-tracking data appears to suggest the helicopter was flying above the permitted altitude right before the crash happened (BBC News). The plane was coming from Wichita, Kansas, while the helicopter was coming from Fort Belvoir, Virginia, and belonged to B company, 12th Aviation Battalion (BBC and CNN).

The names of the soldiers on the helicopter were released to the public by the army. They were Captain Rebecca Lobach, Staff Sergeant Ryan O’hara, and Chief Warrant Officer 2 Andrew Eaves according to Reuters news. "These were two experienced, qualified pilots to fly in this local area...This is something they've done many times before, and they were simply out flying a training mission that's required to re-evaluate, just like every Army pilot does on an annual basis,” said Col. Mark Ott, deputy director of aviation for the Army.

Of the sixty passengers on the plane, twenty-eight of them were young skaters, their parents, and their coaches returning home from a development camp in Kansas. Others were taking a hunting trip with friends, along with the four-person crew. The National Transportation Safety Board is leading the investigation and have noted that they “have recovered two so-called black boxes from the plane... and a black box from the Army helicopter was retrieved...” according to the New York Times. The cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder are tools that help investigators reconstruct the events that lead up to a plane crash (WVTM 13).

A report by the Federal Aviation Administration found that a controller working that night was performing jobs usually assigned to two controllers, instead of one. Investigations are still going to conclude what exactly happened to cause this tragedy, as well as continuing to identify the remaining victims.

On January 31, a second plane crash happened in Philadelphia. There were eight dead, and 24 injured on the ground. There were four crew members, a pediatric patient and her mother, along with a doctor. There were no survivors. “The area of impact from the crash is roughly four to six blocks, and officials have discovered debris around the city, Philadelphia’s managing director Adam Thiel said at a news conference earlier Saturday,” reported CNN news. According to city officials on CNN news, the medical transport plane crashed in a residential neighborhood in northeast Philadelphia, engulfing five homes and numerous vehicles in flames and leaving the area covered in debris. A GPS collected data on the jet showed that it flew up to 1,500 feet into the air then taking a few turns before crashing back down. This happened within a minute, says CBS news. Investigations are still underway. As they piece together the story, they have begun to collect