00:00The plane that crashed in Washington D.C.
00:05ended up destroyed after it collided with a Black Hawk helicopter
00:10in the vicinity of the local airport,
00:16Ronald Reagan Airport.
00:19Unfortunately, we have to say that 27 bodies have been recovered,
00:26according to official sources,
00:30but it is not expected that there are survivors of these 67 people
00:35who were on board the plane that ended up, as we said,
00:40colliding in the air, a crash in the air.
00:43This is the moment of impact that occurs between that helicopter,
00:50Black Hawk, a military helicopter,
00:53and the plane that ended up destroyed,
00:57breaking in the air after the impact.
01:00We are working live from the United States.
01:03This is Adrian Sack. Adrian, good morning.
01:05What can you tell us about this story that we just mentioned?
01:11Good morning, Lu.
01:12Well, moments ago there was a press conference
01:17held by the mayor of Washington D.C., Muriel Bowser,
01:22together with the chiefs of police,
01:24the Secretary of Transportation, recently appointed by Trump,
01:27and well, they had to give the news that unfortunately,
01:32well, with the first lights of the day,
01:34which are 7.53 a.m. all over the East Coast,
01:38the rescue operations were terminated
01:44and they moved on to recovery operations
01:48of corpses and remains of the plane
01:51for the investigation of the accident.
01:53So far, well, if I update the number,
01:56so far they have recovered 32 corpses, 32 bodies,
02:01of the 67 that were lost in total in this tragedy.
02:07Well, there are 67 because 60 correspond to passengers
02:12of the American Airlines flight that was going from Wichita,
02:18from Kansas, from the center of the United States
02:21to the capital, to Washington D.C.,
02:23and that at 9 p.m., according to the first investigations,
02:28what the preliminaries have concluded,
02:30they say it was the helicopter of the armed forces
02:34of the United States, Black Hawk,
02:37that was doing a training flight
02:40and that in an abrupt descent flight
02:43hit the fuselage of this plane,
02:46a medium-sized plane, as I told you,
02:49it has a capacity for 65 passengers
02:52and it was almost full,
02:54until it was split into three parts,
02:58in three pieces, with what is assumed
03:00that the death of the vast majority of passengers
03:03was instantaneous, right?
03:05Because then, in addition, the remains of this plane
03:09and the helicopter all fell into the Potomac River,
03:13where there are temperatures of at least 10 degrees below zero.
03:17I had to be there, just last week,
03:21flying, well, arriving at that airport
03:24and also departing, due to all the journalistic coverage
03:28of the assumption of Donald Trump,
03:30and well, I could see that the river was frozen.
03:34Several sections, at least, of the river
03:37close to the airport were frozen.
03:40Now, we are not in a polar wave situation,
03:43like last week, but anyway,
03:45the temperatures are extremely cold
03:47and they already assumed that in case
03:50some people, some of the passengers
03:53or the crew members were still alive
03:56after the tremendous impact, right?
03:59of the crash between the plane and the helicopter,
04:01it was going to be very difficult for them to survive
04:05even if they had been able to get to the surface
04:08for more than half an hour, right?
04:10It would be too much, it was an extreme hypothesis.
04:12So, yesterday, even President Donald Trump
04:15in his statement already considered them dead, right?
04:18He insinuated that they were already,
04:20they prayed for the souls of all those involved in the accident.
04:23Adri, you said you knew that airport
04:26and also that it is a really complex airport, right?
04:30Due to these issues also linked, among other things,
04:33with the military activities that take place
04:35because we have to talk about a space
04:37that is practically a few meters in front of the Pentagon.
04:41Of course, exactly.
04:43On the other side of the Potomac, of the river,
04:45is the Pentagon and many training flights are made,
04:49particularly of military helicopters, right?
04:53Because, well, there is also a very close base
04:56there in Virginia.
04:58Washington DC is a city that is actually
05:01the only city in the state of Columbia, right?
05:04That's why DC is the District of Columbia.
05:06But Columbia is only that city
05:09and it is surrounded by two other states
05:11which are Virginia and Maryland.
05:13Both are highly militarized,
05:16well, traditionally,
05:18and because they also, well,
05:20guard, let's say, all the political life
05:24of the United States at the federal level
05:26and all the foreign representations
05:29that the diplomatic delegations of the world have,
05:33which are all concentrated in Washington.
05:36So, precisely, what you do see there,
05:40and what I noticed particularly in this last flight,
05:43it caught my attention,
05:45it was also an American Airlines flight
05:47that flew very low throughout the flight, right?
05:49That you could just communicate by cell phone
05:53without using the Wi-Fi services of the plane, right?
05:56Look.
05:57Not the land services.
05:58The cell phone services.
06:00A long time, of course,
06:02a long time before arriving.
06:04I spent it chatting,
06:06the most comfortable,
06:08in airplane mode and everything,
06:11you could,
06:12that if you connected to the plane's Wi-Fi,
06:16but you also removed the airplane mode
06:18and you could do it quietly.
06:20That, well, it just caught my attention a lot
06:23and that was one of the data
06:25that one of the passengers gave,
06:29who was not,
06:30you see, always in these tragedies
06:31there is one who does not go up,
06:32who could not for some reason.
06:34Well, here was a passenger
06:36who did not travel,
06:37who miraculously survived
06:39and who was communicating
06:41with some of the passengers
06:42who were on board the plane
06:44and who told him,
06:45look, in 20 minutes it is planned that we land.
06:48And then the contact of this passenger
06:50and all the others was lost, right?
06:53So, there they were presuming
06:55that something serious had happened, really,
06:58because it is rare that, well,
07:00you can run out of cell phone battery,
07:02but not everyone else.
07:03If you know the whole group here,
07:05there were many who were from the community
07:07of artistic skating, right?
07:09Of course, and precisely regarding this,
07:11some images began to transcend,
07:13among others,
07:14of a Russian couple,
07:17we are talking about Evgenia Shishklova
07:20and Vadim Naubov,
07:22who were on board this plane,
07:27this American Airlines flight,
07:29who lived in the United States
07:31since 1998.
07:33This information is already official
07:36and, in addition, the Kremlin itself ratifies it.
07:40Well, figure, precisely, of skating,
07:43who now dedicated themselves
07:44to the training of younger skaters
07:47and who came from a tournament, right, Adri?
07:51Yes, yes, they came from a tournament
07:53that had been held in Wichita.
07:55They were rooted in the United States,
07:57but they were still working
07:58with the skating team
08:00of the Russian Federation, precisely.
08:02They were very well known,
08:03they had been champions.
08:05Their son also
08:08dedicates himself to high competition artistic skating
08:11and then there were several skaters there,
08:13other coaches too.
08:16For that reason,
08:17they had flown precisely to Wichita,
08:20because there was a tournament there.
08:22And well, at the end,
08:23they returned to Washington, D.C.
08:25and well,
08:27it was precisely in the community
08:29of artistic skating
08:30where today they are particularly mourning.
08:34Absolutely.
08:35Returning to the moment of impact,
08:38the truth is that it draws attention powerfully, right?
08:41You said that, in principle,
08:43the helicopter,
08:45there we are going to repeat them,
08:47the helicopter ends up colliding
08:49precisely when it was doing
08:52training tasks.
08:54Manoeuvres.
08:55Exactly, training tasks
08:56and manoeuvres of descent,
08:58but abrupt.
09:00This is something usual in the area, I imagine,
09:03but there has never been a situation
09:05of an impact in the air.
09:08Yes, look,
09:09military helicopters are often seen
09:12near the airport.
09:14That draws a lot of attention.
09:16Well, on this particular trip,
09:17I even got to see the Marine One,
09:20which is the presidential helicopter
09:23that was taking, in this case, Joe Biden
09:26on the last flight to the Air Base
09:31to go to California,
09:37on his last flight as retired president.
09:40But there were also other security helicopters.
09:43There are many military helicopters
09:45flying over Washington permanently.
09:47Of course.
09:48And in this case, precisely for this reason,
09:50the pilots say that it is a difficult airport
09:53because it is the busiest,
09:56not at the passenger level,
09:58but at the plane level and at the occupation level
10:00of landing tracks.
10:02It is the non-international
10:03decabotage airport.
10:05Ronald Reagan is not an international airport.
10:08That is the one in Dallas,
10:10which is on the outskirts of Washington.
10:14And being at the national level,
10:17it has a very intense traffic
10:19of medium and small aircraft.
10:22And well, in this case,
10:24there was the occupied runway,
10:25runway number one,
10:26where I wanted to land this flight
10:28coming from Wichita.
10:30And what the plane was doing
10:31at the time of the collision
10:33was to reposition
10:35to be able to land on another runway,
10:37the number three.
10:39Well, it was at that moment
10:40that the plane was doing this low-altitude maneuver
10:43when it is hit by this helicopter
10:46that does not see it and does not understand.
10:49Nobody understands how I don't see it
10:51because despite being a moonless night,
10:53it was already nine o'clock at night,
10:55local time,
10:56eleven o'clock at night in Argentina,
10:59the air, let's say,
11:01the airspace was quite free
11:04and there were no clouds.
11:06There were no clouds
11:08and there were no other atmospheric obstacles,
11:10there was no rain,
11:11they were optimal.
11:13That is why President Donald Trump himself
11:16was angry at the tweets he made on Twitter
11:20about what had happened.
11:21In fact, his Secretary of Transport
11:23today also made the same complaint
11:26that this should not happen,
11:28that the Americans have to fly safely,
11:31that since 2009 there had been no major accidents
11:36and that, well, this is not something
11:39that is expected to happen
11:41because the automatic security systems
11:44of the plane did not work either.
11:46Many failures will surely have to be reviewed.
11:48Exactly.
11:49Many failures.
11:50Adri.
11:51They are now with the expertise,
11:52then we will see.
11:53We will continue to work on the subject.
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