Overview

The 2025 Washington, D.C. Reagan Airport Plane Crash refers to a collision between PSA Airlines Flight 5342 and a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter over the Potomac River at Washington, D.C.'s Reagan International Airport late on Wednesday, January 29th, 2025. The plane was arriving in D.C. from Wichita, Kansas when it collided with the Army transport helicopter on the approach end of the runway. The accident marks the first American aviation disaster since the 2009 Colgan Air Flight 3407 crash. Significant media coverage followed the incident in late January 2025, sparking widespread reactions, speculation and conspiracy theories online.

Background

Redditor^[1] /u/NighthawkCP made a post on Reddit's /r/Aviation alerting users to a plane crash that occurred at the Washington, D.C. Reagan International Airport late on January 29th, 2025. The post gathered over 20,000 upvotes and 6,200 comments in 17 hours.

Also on January 29th, 2025, Redditor^[2] /u/knowitokay posted a video of the crash to the /r/Aviation subreddit as well, showing a bright light erupting as a PSA Airlines 5342 (a CRJ 700) collided with PAT25 (an Army transport helicopter) on the approach end of runway 33 at DCA, Reagan National Airport. The post gathered over 13,000 upvotes and 1,500 comments before it was locked by moderators later that day.

Numerous news outlets quickly picked up the story that night, such as the Washington Post.^[12] That night, FOX 11 Los Angeles uploaded coverage of the initial reports to its YouTube channel, receiving over 1.2 million views, 3,000 likes and 2,300 comments in 16 hours.

Developments

Word of the accident rapidly spread online that night as developments in the story continued to emerge. On January 29th, 2025, X^[3] user and International Security Correspondent covering the Pentagon Indrees Ali reported, "The Joint Task Force-National Capitol Region says the BlackHawk was taking part in a training flight." The thread accumulated over 187,000 views, 310 likes and 230 retweets in 15 hours.

The news that the crashed UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter was with the 12th Aviation Battalion and was taking part in a training exercise at the time of the crash was later corroborated by several mainstream news outlets.^[4][5]

On January 29th, the X^[10] account @ADSBex, a flight data monitoring page, shared the flight paths for both the commercial plane and the Black Hawk helicopter, receiving over 854,000 views and 1,400 likes in roughly a day.

Also on January 29th, BNO News^[6] reported that 19 bodies had been pulled out of the Potomac River and that there were no initial reports of survivors, according to first responders. The X post garnered over 1.1 million views, 9,800 likes and 1,800 retweets in 14 hours.

On January 30th, 2025, CBS News posted a YouTube^[8] video titled, "What we know about the midair collision outside D.C." The video recapped the details of the crash and subsequent rescue efforts undertaken by divers and EMTs, noting that 18 bodies had been recovered from three different underwater debris fields at the time of the report. Approximately 60 people are thought to have died in the accident.

Moreover, a senior transportation correspondent noted the airspace around the airport is highly monitored and tightly controlled to ensure no such incidents like this occur. The correspondent continued, "Certainly, something went very, very wrong here."

Online Reactions

Some internet users expressed suspicion and confusion about how a military aircraft and a commercial plane could crash minutes before the plane was set to land, with some even spreading conspiracy theories about the incident.

For example, on January 29th, 2025, X^[7] user @TheWapplehouse tweeted, "A Blackhawk used for VIP transport crashing into a airliner over DC feels like it was cooked up in a Chinese lab to kill shot whatever’s left of America’s hanging-by-a-thread psyche," gathering over 2,700 likes in a day.

Between the night of January 29th and the afternoon of January 30th, several threads speculating on the accident being a conspiracy theory to assassinate a VIP target or cause a distraction for the public spread the /r/conspiracy subreddit, many receiving hundreds or thousands of upvotes in less than 24 hours.^[13][14][15]

On January 30th, 2025, President Donald Trump posted about the crash on his Truth Social^[9] account, writing, "The airplane was on a perfect and routine line of approach to the airport. The helicopter was going straight at the airplane for an extended period of time. It is a CLEAR NIGHT, the lights on the plane were blazing, why didn’t the helicopter go up or down, or turn. Why didn’t the control tower tell the helicopter what to do instead of asking if they saw the plane. This is a bad situation that looks like it should have been prevented. NOT GOOD!!!" The post gathered over 17,000 likes in a day.

Also on January 30th, X^[11] user @marionumber4 posted a Homelander Gets Applause meme and noted that the flight was unrelated to the string of controversies plaguing Boeing in 2024, writing, "Boeing executives finding out that the Blackhawk/American Airlines crash didn’t involve one of their planes for once." The meme received over 1.1 million views and 5,300 likes in 14 hours.

Search Interest

External References