A jet carrying a group of figure skaters, their parents, and coaches collided with an Army helicopter while landing at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Wednesday night.
Doug Zeghibe, CEO and executive director of the Skating Club of Boston in Norwood, Massachusetts, stated that 14 members of the U.S. Figure Skating team, including six affiliated with the club, were aboard the American Airlines flight, which crashed into the Potomac River near Washington, D.C.
Among the passengers were skater Spencer Lane and his mother, Molly; skater Jinna Han and her mother, Jin; and coaches Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov. Shishkova and Naumov, former world champions in pairs skating, competed in two Winter Olympics. Their son, Maxim Naumov, a U.S. competitive figure skater, was not on the flight.
“For all of us, this feels like losing family,” Zeghibe said.
The group was returning from the National Development Camp, held after the U.S. Championships in Kansas, and was scheduled to board a connecting flight from Reagan to Boston on Wednesday night.
According to the Federal Aviation Administration, the midair collision occurred at 8:48 p.m. when a regional jet departing from Wichita, Kansas, struck a military helicopter conducting a training flight while approaching the airport runway.
Officials announced during a morning press conference that they have transitioned from a rescue to a recovery operation, as no survivors are expected.
This tragedy echoes a past loss for the Skating Club of Boston. In 1961, a plane carrying 18 members of the U.S. figure skating team to the world championships in Prague crashed while attempting to land in Brussels.
“Almost half of those on board were from the Skating Club,” Zeghibe recalled.
All 73 passengers perished, including 16-year-old Laurence Owen of Winchester, Massachusetts, who was known as “America’s Queen of the Ice.
