A Massachusetts skating club has learned that six of its community members were among those on board an American Airlines flight that collided with a military helicopter over the Potomac River Wednesday night.
Officials have said there are no survivors in the crash. There were 64 people on board the plane and three in the helicopter.
U.S. Figure Skating has said that several members of the skating community were on board American Airlines Flight 5342, including athletes, coaches and family members. They were returning home from the National Development Camp in Wichita, Kansas.
Doug Zeghibe, CEO and executive director of the Skating Club of Boston in Norwood, Massachusetts, confirmed they had two teenage skaters, two coaches and two parents on the flight.
The skaters were identified by the club as Spencer Lane and Jinna Han. They were accompanied by their mothers, Christine Lane and Jin Han. Former world champions Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, who coached young skaters for the club, were also on the plane.
“I don’t know what the word is, is it wrecked, is it devastated? Folks are just stunned by this,” Zeghibe said Thursday.
Zeghibe described Spencer and Jinna as talented athletes and young leaders among the club’s skaters. Their families were also extremely involved.
“Skating is a very close and tight-knit community. These kids and their parents, they’re here at our facility in Norwood six, sometimes seven days a week,” Zeghibe said. “It’s a close, tight bond and I think for all of us, we have lost family.”
Lane was the 2025 intermediate eastern sectionals champion, and had become popular among the skating community on social media, where he has thousands of TikTok followers. On Wednesday, he had posted a video showing him doing a triple toe loop to wrap up the development camp.
“I am so happy to have qualified for national development camp earlier in November. It has been my goal almost ever since I became aware that it was a thing. I learned so much new information that I can apply to my everyday life, and met so many amazing people,” Lane had said in an Instagram post Wednesday.
He later posted a photo of him aboard the plane just before it departed from Wichita.
Originally from Russia, Shishkova and Naumov joined the staff at The Skating Club of Boston in Norwood, Massachusetts, in 2017, according to the club website. Shishkova, 52, and Naumov, 55, won the pairs figure skating event at the 1994 World Championship. The couple has been living in the U.S. since 1998 after retiring from competitive skating, according to Russian state news agency TASS.
Their son Maxim Naumov, who trained in Norwood, competed for the U.S. and was the U.S. National Novice Championship in 2017. He had previously returned from the training camp and was not on the plane.
Zeghibe said the loss of the young athletes and coaches was not only a devastating loss to the club personally, but also a loss for the future of skating as a whole.
The Skating Club of Boston, which is set to host the world championships in March, is among the best-known clubs in the world, producing two Olympic gold medalists and even more world champions. Among them have been two-time Olympic champion Dick Button, Olympic gold medalist Tenley Albright, two-time Olympic medalist Nancy Kerrigan and Olympic silver medalist Paul Wylie.
The club sent 18 skaters to Wichita, including Jimmy Ma, who finished fifth at the U.S. championships on Sunday.
This is not the first time the club has suffered a devastating loss from a plane crash. In 1961, the U.S. Figure Skating Team was involved in a plane crash in Belgium. Almost half of the victims had ties to the Skating Club of Boston, according to Zeghibe.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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