If changes aren't made, that near-miss becomes a mid-air collision,” one aviation safety expert said. “Unfortunately, that's what we had last night.”

More than 60 people were killed when an American Airlines regional passenger jet collided with a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter on Wednesday and crashed into the frigid Potomac River near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

The airspace around Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport has long been problematic due to heavy military and commercial flight activity in the nation’s capital, according to industry insiders.

The collision between an American Airlines Group Inc. regional jet and a military helicopter near Ronald Reagan airport in Washington left no survivors on board the two aircraft, authorities said,

Wednesday night’s crash of an American Airlines commuter plane in Washington could be one of the worst disasters for the Fort Worth-based airline in more than two decades.

The Federal Aviation Administration in a statement said American Airlines Flight 5342, departing from Wichita, Kansas to Washington, collided around 9 p.m. midair while approaching the runway with a Sikorsky H-60 helicopter.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov further confirmed that Russian figure skaters Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, who won the pairs title at the 1994 World Championships and competed at the Winter Olympics twice, were passengers.

The CRJ700 is a regional jet frequently used on short- to medium-haul flights. Reagan airport handles about 1,200 flights a day, almost all of which are limited to less than 1,300 miles because of the airport’s perimeter rule.

Several members' of the U.S. Figure Skating community were onboard the American Airlines plane that collided with a U.S. Army Black Hawk Helicopter over Washington, D.C., the governing body said in a statement.

While officials have not said how many people died or were injured, the crash has already taken an emotional toll on the local communities.

After America's deadliest airline crash in a generation, disaster crews turned to the painstaking tasks ahead: recovering every body, identifying each life lost, reuniting the dead with those they leave behind.