What to know about the plane and helicopter crash near Washington

A passenger jet carrying 64 people crashed into the Potomac River near Washington on Wednesday night after colliding midair with a military helicopter while approaching Reagan National Airport, officials said.

The plane was being operated as American Eagle Flight 5342 by PSA Airlines for its parent carrier, American Airlines, and had taken off from Wichita, Kansas, with 60 passengers and four crew members onboard. At about 9 p.m., it collided with an Army helicopter carrying a crew of three.

The number of casualties was unclear. Rescue teams were searching the frigid water late Wednesday.

Here is what to know about the crash

The collision caused an explosion

The collision was apparently captured in a video from a live webcam operated by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, which is a few miles north of the crash site.

At 8:47 pm on the stream, two aircraft are seen hitting each other, resulting in an explosive fireball followed by a trail of smoke. Before the collision, the plane had been on approach to Runway 33, the Federal Aviation Administration said.

Multiple agencies in Washington said they had received calls about a plane crash above the Potomac at 8:53 pm Washington's fire emergency department said the plane had crashed into the river.

Officials are trying to determine the number of casualties

The authorities had not given an official count of survivors or victims by late Wednesday, as helicopters, police boats and divers massed in the water near the airport to respond to the crash.

With 64 people on board, the commercial jet, a Bombardier CRJ700, was nearly full. The helicopter, a Sikorsky H-60 Black Hawk, had been operating out of Fort Belvoir in Virginia. An Army official could not confirm the status of the crew of three late Wednesday.

Rescuers face challenging conditions

About 300 emergency responders were working in dangerous and “highly complex” conditions to find survivors or bodies, said John Donnelly, Washington’s fire chief. The dark, freezing and windy conditions heightened the challenge, as meteorologists warned of the risk of hypothermia.

The search and rescue effort was expected to take days, Mr. Donnelly said.

Track live updates of the incident here