A young woman who sent her husband a chilling final message just before dying in the Washington, D.C., plane crash has been identified. Asra Hussain texted her husband, Hamaad Raza, 25, saying, “We are landing in 20 minutes” as American Eagle Flight 5342 neared Reagan National Airport shortly before 8 p.m. ET on Wednesday night.
It was the last message the 26-year-old would ever send. Her devastated husband of two years, Hamaad Raza, 25, was filmed describing how he had sent several replies, but none were ever received. Asra was among the 60 passengers who were killed when the Flight 5342 collided midair with a Black Hawk helicopter on Wednesday.
Final Goodbye
All four crew members on the plane perished, along with three military personnel aboard the helicopter. “She texted me that they were landing in 20 minutes. The rest of my texts didn’t get delivered and that’s when I realized that something might be up,” a distraught Hamaad said at the airport.
“I’m just praying that somebody’s pulling her out of the river right now, as we speak. That’s all I can pray for, I’m just praying to God,” he told WUSA9.
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Raza’s father, Dr. Hashim Raza, identified him in a social media post, writing: “This my 25 yo old son who lost his beautiful wife. We are going to DC to be with him. Hug your family. We are devastated. Our Faith in God is unshakable.”
Dr. Raza is a well-known physician at Missouri Baptist Medical Center in St. Louis. According to their social media profiles, Hamaad, an accountant at Ernst & Young, and Asra both attended Indiana University.
He shared that his wife had traveled to Wichita for work but had always felt uneasy about flying.
Hamaad and a relative were seen nervously pacing through Terminal 2 at Reagan Airport on Wednesday night, desperately awaiting updates.
A WUSA reporter described his conversation with Raza as “one of the most heartbreaking interviews of my professional career.”
Horror in Sky
The collision took place around 9 p.m. when a regional jet, arriving from Wichita, Kansas, crashed into a military helicopter on a training mission, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
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Just minutes before landing, air traffic controllers asked if American Airlines Flight 5342 could land on a shorter runway, to which the pilots agreed. The plane was cleared to land, and flight tracking sites showed the aircraft adjusting its approach to accommodate the new runway.
Less than 30 seconds before the crash, an air traffic controller asked the helicopter if it had the incoming plane in sight. Moments later, the controller radioed the helicopter again, instructing it to “pass behind the CRJ” — apparently signaling the helicopter to wait for the Bombardier CRJ-700 jet to pass. However, there was no response. Seconds after, the collision occurred.
The plane’s radio transponder stopped transmitting about 2,400 feet from the runway, roughly over the center of the Potomac.
The passengers included figure skaters returning from the 2025 U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Wichita, along with two of their Russian coaches, Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov.
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The Kremlin confirmed that other Russian nationals, in addition to Shishkova and Naumov, were also aboard the plane. The coaches, skaters, and others had participated in the championships, which ended on Sunday, as well as a development camp.
Shishkova and Naumov, who were married, had won a world championship in pairs figure skating in 1994.
Officials reported that the plane’s fuselage was found upside down, broken into three sections, and submerged in waist-deep water. The wreckage of the helicopter was also found.
