"We are now at a point where we are switching from a rescue operation to a recovery operation," Washington Fire Chief John Donnelly told a news conference at Reagan National Airport.
"At this point we don't believe there are any survivors," Donnelly said, adding that 28 bodies had been recovered — including one from the helicopter.
As dawn broke over the crash site, emergency vessels with powerful arc lights and inflatables with diving teams could be seen moving back and forth over a wide area of the river.
Donnelly said 300 first responders had been involved in the operation — most of it conducted in pitch darkness.
"These responders found extremely frigid conditions, they found heavy wind, they found ice on the water, and they operated all night in those conditions," he said.
There were no details on the cause of the crash, with transport officials saying both aircraft were on standard flight patterns on a clear night with good visibility.
"Do I think this was preventable? Absolutely," Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told the news conference.
Audio from air traffic controllers showed them repeatedly asking the helicopter if it had the passenger jet "in sight", and then just before the crash telling it to "pass behind" the plane.
"I just saw a fireball and it was gone," one air traffic controller was heard telling another after communication with the helicopter was cut.
Both aircraft crashed into the Potomac river and the fuselage of the passenger jet was inverted and broken into three sections.
US Figure Skating said several athletes, coaches and officials were aboard the flight, while officials in Moscow confirmed married Russian couple Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov — who won the 1994 world pairs title — were on the jet.
The Bombardier plane operated by an American Airlines subsidiary, with 60 passengers and four crew on board, was approaching Reagan National Airport at around 9:00pm (0200 GMT) after flying from Wichita, Kansas, when the collision happened.
US Army officials said the helicopter involved was a Black Hawk carrying three soldiers on a "training flight".
Witness Ari Schulman was driving home when he saw what he described as "a stream of sparks" overhead.
"Initially I saw the plane and it looked fine, normal. It was right about to head over land," he told CNN.
"Three seconds later, and at that point it was banked all the way to the right [...] I could see the underside of it, it was lit up a very bright yellow, and there was a stream of sparks underneath it," Schulman added.
"It looked like a Roman candle."
Trump criticizes traffic control
While other officials stressed they were waiting for investigations to unfold — President Donald Trump posted a critical take on the incident on social media.
"The airplane was on a perfect and routine line of approach to the airport. The helicopter was going straight at the airplane for an extended period of time. It is a CLEAR NIGHT, the lights on the plane were blazing," Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
"Why didn't the helicopter go up or down, or turn. Why didn't the control tower tell the helicopter what to do instead of asking if they saw the plane. This is a bad situation that looks like it should have been prevented. NOT GOOD!!!"
The Federal Aviation Administration ordered the grounding of all planes at Reagan National, with operations set to resume at 11:00am (1600GMT).
American Airlines' chief executive Robert Isom expressed "deep sorrow", while US Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas called the collision "nothing short of a nightmare."
Crowded airspace
It was unclear how a passenger plane with modern collision-avoidance technology and nearby traffic controllers could collide with a military aircraft over the nation's capital.
The airspace around Washington is often crowded, with planes coming in low over the city to land at Reagan National and helicopters — military, civilian and carrying senior politicians or officials — buzzing about both day and night.
The same airport was the scene of a deadly crash in January 1982 when Air Florida Flight 90, a Boeing 737, took off but quickly plummeted, hitting the 14th Street bridge and crashing through the ice into the Potomac River. Seventy-eight people died.
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