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# Six Seven
- URL: https://dianaludwick.com/six-seven/
- Published: 2026-01-28T17:22:53.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-24T20:12:23.000Z
- Description: "Six Seven" an accounting of numbers surrounding the midair collision of Flight 5342 and a U.S. Army Black Hawk on 29 Jan 2025. A conceit that numbers cannot capture it all. Poem 028 in a series of 365 poems written by Diana Ludwick in 2026. Photo: Author's passenger view of the cockpit, on a United
- Author: Diana Ludwick
- Tags: 2026 Poetry Challenge, Poems, air travel, crash, DCA, death, grief, numbers, remembrance, #Migrated-1792872215677, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2026-10-24 20:03

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.