Search efforts are underway in the Potomac River after a plane with 60 passengers and 4 crew members on board collided in midair with an Army Black Hawk helicopter carrying three soldiers near Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.
C.
According to a police official who spoke to CBS News, at least 18 bodies had been recovered by 11:30 p.m. ET.
The plane, American Eagle Flight 5342, had reportedly taken off from Wichita, Kansas, and was approaching for landing when the collision occurred.
The helicopter was on a training flight with a crew of three, based at Fort Belvoir in Virginia.
The Reuters news agency also reported that Russia's state-run TASS news agency, citing a source, said Russian figure skaters and coaches Yevgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov were on the plane.
WATCH: Washington DC Plane Crash Caught On Camera
They won the world championship in pairs figure skating in 1994 and got married the following year.
The last major U.S. commercial air crash occurred in February 2009 when a Continental Airlines flight out of Newark, New Jersey, operated by Colgan Air crashed into a house as it was approaching the airport in Buffalo, New York.
That plane was a Bombardier Q400. 49 people died in the tragedy. Continental merged with United Airlines in 2010.
The last major American Airlines crash occurred in November 2001 near John F. Kennedy International Airport. American Airlines Flight No. 587, an Airbus A300, crashed shortly after takeoff, killing 265 people. It was bound for Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. The plane crashed in the Belle Harbor area of the Rockaways in the New York City borough of Queens.
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