One year ago tomorrow,
on twenty-nine
January 2025
sixty-seven humans
lost their lives in a
“one hundred percent avoidable”
midair collision
between a
U.S. Army Sikorsky
Black Hawk
on a training mission and
American Airlines
Flight 5342 on its
final descent
from Wichita.
Seventy-five feet
would have separated
the two aircraft on the
best of circumstances.
But on that
one icy
winter night,
the distance
became zero.
The one jet held
sixty-four people,
mere seconds and
eight hundred meters
from landing at DCA
runway thirty-three.
The one helicopter
carried three soldiers:
one student Captain,
one Chief Warrant
Officer instructor,
and one
Staff Sergeant
crewman.
None of them,
zero, saw the plane
through their
periphery-restricting
night vision goggles
as their craft rose
three-hundred feet
in elevation.
None of them heard
over the radio static
as frantic
air traffic controllers
pleaded for the
chopper to give way.
Sixty-seven private worlds—
each filled with dreams
and fears and bills,
families and pets
and friends and hobbies
and plans and to-do lists
and frustrations and hopes
and goals and vocations —
all came to a cruel end
in the frigid Potomac River.
One could count
the number of suitcases,
laptops, winter coats
and tennis shoes
recovered by
scores of first responders.
All these numbers
and metrics
— while necessary,
helpful to measure
record and analyze —
fail to calculate
the human impact
of this
horrendous crash.
Children
would-be Winter Olympians
fresh off their performances
at the Figure Skating
Championships in Kansas;
Gold Medal coaches
and proud families from the
Ashburn Ice House;
Six public school families;
Fiancés and
cat dads and
attorneys.
Defenders of
our homeland;
veteran pilots and
dedicated flight crew.
Four union members.
People hailing from
all over the world,
previously on
their own flight paths,
now eternally
intertwined in death.
No figures
can summate
what is an
immeasurable loss,
felt exponentially
by the
innumerable
communities
left here
to grieve
and remember.
Sixty-seven lives
Sixty-seven deaths
give rise to
infinite ripples
in the
fabric of our future.
