We’ve woken up to news of an enormous tragedy, one in which a number of members of the U.S. figure skating team were on board an American Eagle flight from Wichita, Kan. to Washington, D.C. that crashed into a military helicopter on the landing descent.
As of 7 a.m. today, no survivors have been identified.
We’ll know more in the next few hours about who the skaters and coaches are. As far as we can tell, most participants in a developmental figure skating camp being held after the U.S. Figure Skating Championships last weekend.
As such, the team members weren’t the core of the effort for the 2026 Olympics in Milan, but might have been part of the teams competing in 2030 and beyond. It is a much different group from the team that was lost when a Sabena Airlines flight crashed in Brussels in February 1961. That group was the senior national team on its way to the world championships in Prague, and had been part of what had been a dominant group of skaters in the world level.
A few years ago, I wrote about my friend Miriam, who used to be part of the U.S. figure skating apparatus. She was months away from her departure from the competition apparatus when I first met her, and we became fast dance friends.
She’s now married and raising a family, but doing so with great happiness. She wasn’t on a world team, but was accomplished and had to travel to competitions in the wintertime, sometimes in hazardous conditions.
I guess, when it comes to competing in a winter sport, the hazards of long-range travel are painfully obvious. It is a miracle to me that more flights involving sports figures, like professional teams, aren’t involved in more mishaps.