‘What a terrible night this has been,’ writes President Donald Trump on his Truth Social platform. ‘God bless you all!’ Trump also expressed his bafflement as to how a Black Hawk military helicopter, operating out of Fort Belvoir in Virginia, managed to collide with American Eagle Flight 5342, a commercial passenger plane carrying 64 passengers, directly over the Potomac river as the aircraft came into land at Reagan National Airport in Washington, DC.
The airplane was on a perfect and routine line of approach to the airport,’ he said. ‘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!!!
As a superstitious man, someone who believes in God saved him from a bullet in order to make America great again, Trump will be trying to decipher the greater meaning behind this horrible tragedy, coming as it does just ten days into his presidency.
For now, the public are stunned by the disaster. But it surely won’t be long before a public figure tries to blame the new Trump administration’s militaristic streak for the disaster – or portrays the crash as a metaphor for the chaotic reality of Trump 2.0. Online theorists are already convinced the collision was no accident.
It does seem an incredible security failure. The skies over Washington are always very busy: commercial, military, police and presidential aircraft constantly clatter above the nation’s capital. Yet quite how a military-trained pilot, alerted to the presence of a commercial plane by the control tower, could still have smashed into it remains a mystery. Did he somehow not think of his helicopter’s bladespan? Was he distracted by the complexity of some training exercise?
Such matters will be investigated in the coming days. The most pertinent question: is it sensible for war machines to be allowed to fly so close and so often to passenger flights landing at one of America’s busiest airports? For now, however, the grim task of pulling the bodies out of the Potomac river goes on.