A heartbroken husband has revealed the moment he realized his wife was on the doomed American Airlines flight that collided with an Army helicopter near Washington, DC.
American Airlines Flight 5342 carrying 64 passengers collided with an army Black Hawk helicopter, which was carrying three soldiers, as it approached Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Wednesday (January 29).
The catastrophic impact, which is the deadliest US air disaster since 2001, sent both aircraft crashing into the Potomac River around 9PM local time.
During a press conference the following day, President Donald Trump confirmed that there were no survivors from either aircraft.
According to Sky News, rescue crews had recovered 40 bodies from the river, leaving 27 people still unaccounted for.
Among those who tragically died was Asra Hussain, who had been returning home from a work trip in Kansas.
Asra’s husband, Hamaad Raza, had been waiting for her at Reagan National Airport when he received what would be her final message, which read: “We’re landing in 20 minutes.”
But those 20 minutes passed, and she never walked through the terminal doors. Instead, her distraught partner watched as emergency vehicles sped past him toward the Potomac River.
“I was waiting and I started seeing a bunch of EMS vehicles speeding past me, like way too many than normal,” he told NBC 4 Washington.
As panic set in, he tried texting his wife again – but the messages weren’t going through. When he finally reached Terminal 2, he saw hundreds of emergency workers swarming the area.
Desperate for answers, he turned to social media. “I show up to the airport, and my wife’s not responding, and I look on Twitter and I see that it’s her flight,” he said.
Raza and Hussain met in college in Indiana and had only been married for two years.
The devastated man opened up about what his late wife meant to him, telling the outlet: “She went above and beyond and then took a giant leap over that when it came to doing things for other people, for me, for her parents, for my parents,” adding: “She was the kindest person I’ve ever met.”
It’s been a day and the tragic reality still hadn’t sunk in. “It just, feels crazy that it happened to us, to be honest. I mean, it’s like you see these things happen in the news, you see them happen in other countries,” he said.
Now, instead of planning their future together, Raza is planning his wife’s funeral. “Life is short. Hug your loved ones,” he told viewers.
“Tell them you love them when they’re getting on a flight. Check up on them. Text your family when you land,” Raza added.
Investigators are still piecing together what went wrong, but early reports suggest the helicopter was flying too high – about 400 feet – when it crossed paths with the descending airliner, the New York Post reported.
Per CNN, The National Transportation Safety Board, which is leading the probe into the collision, revealed that the plane’s flight data and voice recorders, known as black boxes, have been recovered.
While officials have yet to pinpoint an official cause, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy didn’t hold back when addressing the tragedy.
“Absolutely preventable,” he said on Thursday, agreeing with President Trump that “it looks like it should have been prevented,” per GMA.
