A 26-year-old Pakistani woman was among the 64 passengers on American Airlines Flight 5342 that crashed on Wednesday night following a collision with a U.S. military Black Hawk training helicopter.
While speaking to reporters, Asra Hussain Raza’s husband, 25-year-old Hamaad Raza, shared that the last message he received was a text that said, “We are landing in 20 minutes.” His replies, however, were never sent. It was while Hamaad was waiting at the airport to receive her that the plane collided with the helicopter.
Upon hearing the tragic news, he prayed that she is rescued from the river, in hopes that maybe she made it alive.
The crash took place minutes before the airplane was set to land at Reagan National Airport near Washington DC, on Wednesday night when it collided with an Army helicopter in midair, after which both aircraft plunged into the Potomac River.
In an interview with Reuters, his father, Dr. Hashim Raza, revealed that the couple met at Indiana University Bloomington. Asra had studied corporate finance and was a “straight-A student”.
She then completed her master’s degree in public health from Columbia University and began a job with a consulting group in Washington DC. Her goal, as per the father-in-law, was to work for the government to improve public health and help people,
Hashim Raza would also push her to open a restaurant as she was “a great cook” and made Indian, Italian, and Chinese food.
Asra was on her way back from Wichita, Kansas, where she would travelled to every month to assist in improving the hospital’s operations when the collision took place only minutes before her landing.
“She was an extremely caring person,” he said.”
Hamaad Raza lives in the state of Missouri and has reportedly been married to Asra for two years now. He presently works as an accountant at Ernst & Young.
Dr Hashim is originally from Karachi, Pakistan, and graduated from Dow University. He is now among Missouri’s most distinguished doctors and is currently working at the Missouri Baptist Medical Center.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif conveyed his sorrow over the loss of lives, expressing his condolences to US President Donald Trump and the American people on X (formerly Twitter).
“Deeply saddened by the tragic news of a mid-air accident between a passenger plane and a military helicopter in Washington DC. Our thoughts and prayers are with US President Donald Trump and the American people at this difficult time,” he wrote.
Black box recovery
Investigators on Thursday recovered the black boxes from a passenger plane that collided mid-air with a military helicopter over Washington’s Potomac River, killing all 67 people, as rescuers pulled bodies from the freezing water.
US President Donald Trump launched a political attack, blaming diversity and inclusion policies championed by his Democratic predecessors for causing the incident.
Trump’s politicization of the tragedy came as the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said it had recovered the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder from the Bombardier jet operated by an American Airlines subsidiary that collided with an Army Black Hawk helicopter late Wednesday.
“The recorders are at the NTSB labs for evaluation,” the agency said in a statement to AFP.
According to a New York Times report, staffing was thin in the control tower at Reagan National Airport, where the airliner was about to land when the collision occurred.
One controller, rather than the usual two, was handling both plane and helicopter traffic, the Times quoted a preliminary Federal Aviation Administration report as saying.
A fireball erupted in the night sky and both aircraft tumbled into the icy Potomac, leaving rescue crews to search for victims in the dark and cold.
Over 40 bodies had been recovered as of Thursday evening, according to US media reports.
The passenger plane was carrying 64 people and the Black Hawk had three aboard.
Trump politicizes crash
The collision — the first major crash in the United States since 2009 — occurred as American Eagle Flight 5342 from Wichita, Kansas came in to land.
Reagan National is a major airport located a short distance from downtown Washington, the White House and the Pentagon. The airspace is extremely busy, with civilian and military aircraft a constant presence.
Just 24 hours before the collision, another plane coming in to land at Reagan National had to make a second approach after a helicopter appeared near its flight path, The Washington Post and CNN reported, citing an audio recording from air traffic control.
