Washington, D.C. Plane Crash: New England Athletes Among Those On Board

The figure skating world is mourning after one of the worst aviation incidents in recent American history Wednesday night.

American Airlines Flight 5342 collided with an Army helicopter late Wednesday night near the end of its descent into Reagan National Airport. Both the passenger flight and helicopter crashed into the Potomac River, and all 67 combined passengers are feared dead, Washington D.C. fire chief John Donnelly said in a press conference Thursday morning.

Among the 64 passengers on the American Airlines flight were figure skaters and their families returning to D.C. from the U.S. Figure Skating World Championships in Wichita, Kansas.

U.S. Figure Skating confirmed the reports with a statement overnight.

“U.S. Figure Skating can confirm that several members of our skating community were sadly aboard American Airlines Flight 5342, which collided with a helicopter yesterday evening in Washington, D.C,” the organization said in a statement, per ESPN.com. “We are devastated by this unspeakable tragedy and hold the victims’ families closely in our hearts.”

Tragically, there’s also a connection to New England and the Boston area. According to 7News, six people from the Boston area were on the flight. That included Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, former pairs world champions, who were working as coaches out of the Skating Club of Boston in Norwood, Mass.

Additionally, according to 7News, two 15-year-old local skaters and two of their parents were among those on board. The skaters, identified as Spencer Lane and Jinna Han, were on the plane with their mothers.

Doug Zeghibe, the CEO and executive director of The Skating Club of Boston, issued a statement Thursday morning.

“Our sport and this club have suffered a horrible loss with this tragedy,” the statement read. “Skating is a tight-knit community where parents and kids come together six or seven days a week to train and work together. Everyone is like family. Of the skaters, coaches and parents on the plane, we believe six were from The Skating Club of Boston. We are devasted and completely at a loss for words.”