All 67 people aboard an American Airlines jet and a military helicopter that collided midair on Wednesday near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport outside Washington, D.C., are now believed dead, officials said Thursday morning.
“At this point, we don‘t believe there are any survivors from this accident,” D.C. Fire and EMS Chief John A. Donnelly said at a news conference.
Emergency responders have recovered 27 victims from the plane and one from the helicopter, he added.
About 300 people from state and federal agencies mounted a dangerous rescue mission overnight in the freezing waters of the Potomac River, where the plane fell after the crash.
That rescue missions has now been shifted to a recovery mission, Donnelly said.

Officials did not say what might have caused the crash, and they held off on identifying any of the victims. The district medical office is leading the effort to contact the families of the deceased, Donnelly said.
“We will continue to work to find all the bodies and collect them and reunite them with their loved ones,” he said.
The plane was carrying a group of elite young figure skaters, their parents, and coaches returning from an invitation-only development camp held after the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, which took place from Jan. 20 to 26 in Wichita, Kansas, where the downed flight originated, The Wall Street Journal reported.
“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 sport’s governing body said in a statement.
“We are devastated by this unspeakable tragedy and hold the victims’ families closely in our hearts. We will continue to monitor the situation and will release more information as it becomes available.”
The Skating Club of Boston confirmed that among the coaches on the flight were the married former world champions Yevgenia Shishkova, 52, and Vadim Naumov, 55, who won the pairs title for Russia at the 1994 world championships. They have trained young American skaters since 1998, according to Reuters.
Doug Zeghibe, the executive director of the Boston Skating Club, also confirmed figure skaters Jinna Han and Spencer Lane, as well as their mothers Jin Han and Christine Lane, were on board.
“Our sport and this Club have suffered a horrible loss with this tragedy,” he said, in a statement posted to social media. “Skating is a tight-knit community where parents and kids come together 6 of 7 days a week to train and work together. Everyone is like family.”
On Wednesday evening, Lane posted a photo showing the view out of his window on the DC-bound flight.
Jonah Sobieraj, a figure skater who said he has been friends with Lane for several years and Han for seven years, told the Daily Beast they were “incredible athletes” and, more importantly, demonstrated “amazing character.”
Lane, he noted, was particularly gregarious: “He was everyone’s friend and carried around positivity.”
Han, he said, was warmhearted and kind. “She always wears a smile,” Sobieraj recalled. “She had huge dreams and amazing talents. She was enthusiastic, caring, and an amazing friend to all.”
Young skaters on social media also quickly tried to piece together which of their friends might have been on board. On Instagram, 14-year-old skater Jasmin Liu listed several young champions she worried might have been on the flight.
“Praying for everyone’s safety,” she wrote.

Taylia McGhee, a figure skater who said she has practiced and competed with some of those who were on board the flight, told the Daily Beast her “heart is broken.”
“They were the sweetest and truly worked so hard,” she said. “They had so much talent and dreams. My heart is in such grief.”
American Airlines also has a designated help line for friends and family seeking information about their loves ones, American Airlines CEO Robert Isom said.
As for the crash itself, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said, “We have early indicators of what happened here,” but he declined to provide any details. Both the U.S. Army Black Hawk and the American Airlines flight were following standard flight patterns, and both aircraft were in standard communication with the flight control tower, he said. The helicopter was aware there was a plane in the area.
The captain on the American Airlines flight, which was operated by PSA Airlines, had six years of experience with the airline and the first officer had almost two years, Isom said.
It wasn’t immediately clear how much experience the military pilot had. It was flying a training mission at the time of the crash, Duffy said.
Investigators are working to retrieve the plane’s fuselage from the Potomac, where it is sitting in water that is about waist deep, Duffy said.
The National Transportation Safety Board and Federal Aviation Administration will then analyze the aircraft to try to understand exactly what went wrong. The crash site itself is fairly spread out, with debris traveling from the airport down as far as the Wilson Bridge, Donnelly said.
In the meantime, the FAA has cleared Ronald Reagan Airport to reopen Thursday at 11 a.m. local time, Metropolitan Airports CEO Jack Potter said.