A grainy snippet of video footage taken in the dark of night, seemingly by an airport CCTV camera, appears to show the fatal mid-air collision of an American Airlines passenger plane and a military Black Hawk helicopter.
American Airlines Flight 5342 was on approach at Ronald Reagan National Airport near Washington, D.C., the plane showing up on the video as a fuzzy ball of white light in the black 9 p.m. skies of the U.S. capital.
With touch-down imminent, the 64 passengers and crew aboard were surely looking forward to disembarking and some rest after flying from Wichita, Kansas.
In the first moments of the video footage, nothing seems untoward. It shows scenes one would expect from any bustling airport — including another passenger aircraft taxiing in the foreground….