Richard Arnold: US Correspondent on the major plane crash over the Potomac River in Washington

Officials say there are no survivors from the Potomac River plane crash. 

An American Airlines flight and US Military helicopter collided mid-air near Reagan Washington National Airport last night. 

The plane was carrying 60 passengers and four crew, while the army helicopter was carrying three people. 

US Correspondent Richard Arnold told Mike Hosking that the situation was preventable. 

He says American Airlines’ CEO Robert Isom appears to be blaming the military crew for being in the wrong place, while President Trump is blaming diversity and the Biden Administration for the circumstances.  

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Stay tied. Richard Arnold, good morning. What do you make

(00:02):
only upside of this? I guess I've been reading extent.
It's been a long time since something this catastrophic has
happened on your soil. But I suppose it doesn't make
it any better.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Yeah, this is the deadliest US plane crash in more
than fifteen years, so that's the time spread as they're
still trying to recover bodies from the icy Potomac after
the collision of this black Hawk helicopter military chopper and
an American Airline stead with all sixty seven people on board.
Those two aircraft believed to have been killed. More than
three hundred first responders and rescue workers are on scene.

(00:32):
They've recovered at least twenty eight bodies so far, no survivors,
say rescue officials. We are switching from a rescue operation
to a recovery operation. Yeah, this is grim work. They
have people on boats trying to find bodies and divers
in the frigid waters. The Potomac was only just starting
to thaw after weeks of being frozen over. You know,
with most air disasters it takes months, even years to

(00:55):
fully assess what went wrong. This time, blame games started
instantly to begin. Here is what witness Ari Shulman saw.
He was driving near the Reagan National Airport last night.

Speaker 3 (01:05):
The plan was banked all the way to its right side.
I could see the belly the underside of it. It
was led up a very bright yellow and there was
a stream of sparks underneath the plane. I didn't know
what was going on. I could not see any sort
of helicopter or anything that had collided.

Speaker 2 (01:22):
With Yeah, just those sparks. Then nothing, because the wreckage
of the two craft went down in the river where
the fuselage of the America of the Lane jet now
is in three separate pieces. The jet was coming into land,
and officials said it had been diverted to a second
landing strip while the military chopper had been alerted to
the jets path.

Speaker 3 (01:44):
The helicopter was in a standard pattern.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
So says Transport Secretary Sean Duffy, who's just what two
days into his new job. He says also of this situation.

Speaker 3 (01:54):
Well, I think this was preventable, absolutely.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
Yeah. That chopper, with its crew of three, was on
a training mission over what the busiest landing site in
the country. The Chief of American Airlines Robert Eism appears
to be blaming the military crew for being in the
wrong place. However, in a long statement in the past
our President Trump blamed diversity and Democrats diversity in hiring
air traffic controllers, and the Biden administration, including former Transport

(02:18):
Secretary Pete Buddha. Jetge says Trump is a disaster. He
was a disaster as a mayor. He ran his city
enter the ground, and he's a disaster now. He's just
got a good line of bullshit quote unquote from the
President politics. As Ever, there were a couple of previous
near misses at Reagan National, including one last May and
another in the previous April. In this case, the chopper

(02:41):
pilot was informed of the proximity of the jet by
controllers and said he was well aware of it, but
then neither aircraft moved out of the way. According to
the radar on board the American Airlines flight from Kansas
were a number of top ice skaters, fourteen of them
who had just been taking part in the US National
Skating Championship. A number of these skaters and others from
Russia are among those believed to have been killed in

(03:04):
the tragedy. Not on board was figure skater John Marra Villain,
who was denied boarding because he had his dog with
him and was told at the gate that the pet
was too big and could not come on board the plane.
At the time, the skater was furious, sent a message
on Instagram saying, quote get me the bleep out of
Kansas please. So he got in the car drove home
with his dog.

Speaker 1 (03:24):
Amazing, unreal. I've been watching Cash this morning. He seems
more normal than yesterday's affair.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
It's all relative, isn't it. Yeah, another big day of hearings.
This is also day two of the raf K hearings
for Health Secretary Ark has been hit with i would say,
blistering attacks for his opposition to various vaccines, and he
then revealed only then that he was, while voicing all
of his anti vaxxed themes, he had his own kids vaccinated.

(03:51):
Didn't tell anyone. This also comes after JFK's daughter Caroline
Kennedy went public with that blistering letter where she called
her cousin a quote predator and blamed him for introducing
other Kennedy family members to hard drugs.

Speaker 1 (04:03):
So yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
Also at the hearings today, Cash Purtel for FBI and
Halsey GABBARTT who is up for National Intelligence Director. She
is facing questions about her meetings with Sirius Assad when
he was hanging on to power stool, and over her
past support for people like Edward Snowden who leaked national
security documents. So far, few Republicans have challenged Trump on
any of his picks, so we'll see if any of

(04:26):
this matters to the mostly irrelevant pollies on Capitol Hill.

Speaker 1 (04:30):
See you mana ma'am, have a good week in Richard
Arnold State Side.

Speaker 2 (04:33):
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