From the New York Times, I'm Natalie Kittrowath.

This is the Daily.

On Wednesday night, a passenger jet and a helicopter collided mid-air over Washington, D.C.

It was the deadliest plane crash in the United States in more than 20 years.

Today, my colleague Emily Steele explains what we know about what went wrong.

It's Friday, January 31st.

Emily, it's 5.30 p.m. on Thursday, not even 24 hours after this awful plane crash in Washington.

And we're talking to you because you've spent a lot of time investigating aviation

safety. Can you just explain what exactly happened on Wednesday night? So at 618 on Wednesday

night, there's an American Airlines flight that takes off from Wichita, Kansas. It's going to Washington's Reagan National Airport, and there

are 64 people on board. There are American and Russian figure skaters. They are flying back from

a competition. There's parents. There's coaches. There are a couple of friends who had just been coming back from a hunting trip.

This flight is scheduled to land at 9 o'clock in Washington, D.C., where it's a clear night.

And about that same time, there's a Blackhawk helicopter.

It's an Army helicopter, and there are two officers on board. There's a

sergeant on board as well, and they are conducting flight training in the area. So the jet from

Wichita is on track to land on runway one at Reagan's National Airport.

And the air traffic controller asks the pilot on board

if they can land on a different runway on runway 33 instead.

So inside the cockpit on the American Airlines jet, the pilots are renavigating their landing.

You can imagine the people on the airplane are making sure that their seatbelts are fastened.

They might be able to look out and see the lights of the city.

...