Listen to Air Traffic Controllers and Pilots in the Immediate Aftermath of Deadly Collision

TIME

All 64 people aboard an American Airlines jet that collided with an Army helicopter were feared dead in what was likely to be the worst U.S. aviation disaster in almost a quarter century, officials said Thursday.

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00:00Blackjack 3, um, can you return to base?

00:03Blackjack 3, proceed directly to Glebe, I need you to land.

00:07Stand by, I need you to land immediately.

00:11I need you to land immediately. Can you go to Dallas for a few minutes?

00:15Marshal 1-3, can you go to Baltimore?

00:18Uh, Blue 6-53-0-5, I don't know if you saw it, but about 2,000 feet on our 3 o'clock, about 500 feet up in the air.

00:24Looks like it was flared or something going off right now.

00:27We're handling right now, stand by.

00:29Blue 6-53-0-5, I believe they're going to close the Air Force for an indefinite amount of time.

00:33My suggestion is to go back to the gate.

00:36I don't know if we caught it earlier, what happened, but there was a collision on the approach from the 3-3.

00:43We're going to be shutting down operations for the indefinite future.

00:46If you want to go back to the gate, I highly suggest you guys coordinate with the company and let me know what you want to do.

00:50Alright, we'll let the company talk to them right now.

00:53Yeah, we witnessed the whole thing.

00:55You can keep the information for a month.

00:57Okay, not quite yet, but just remain on frequency and I'll give you a phone number here in a second.

01:02Alright, thanks.

01:04For JetBlue 25-23, did you witness the encounter?

01:08Affirmative.

01:09Okay, Delta 8-32 and Blue 6, for both JetBlue and Delta and Blue 6-53-0-5, can you give me a phone number, just give me one second.

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