Multiple people have been killed in a mid-air collision between an American Airlines passenger jet and an army helicopter in Washington DC.

The aircraft crashed over the Potomac River and there is now a massive search and rescue effort involving multiple agencies at the scene.

Local media is reporting several bodies have been pulled from the freezing water.

Senator Ted Cruz of Texas said on social media that “we know there are fatalities,” though he did not say how many.

American Airlines said 60 passengers and four crew were on board at the time of the crash.

An official from the US Army has confirmed three soldiers were on board the helicopter.

Webcams captured the moment with the vision appearing to show two small aircraft nearing each other before erupting into a ball of flames.

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said the midair crash occurred about 9pm, local time, when Flight 5342, that had departed from Wichita, Kansas, collided with a military Black Hawk helicopter while on approach to a runway at to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

It occurred in some of the most tightly controlled and monitored airspace in the world, almost 5 kilometres south of the White House and the Capitol.

Investigators will try to piece together the moments before the collision, including contact with air traffic controllers as well as a loss of altitude by the passenger jet.

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A few minutes before landing, air traffic controllers asked the arriving commercial jet if it could land on the shorter Runway 33 at the airport, and the pilots said they were able.

Controllers then cleared the plane to land. Flight tracking sites showed the plane adjust its approach to the new runway.

Less than 30 seconds before the crash, an air traffic controller asks the helicopter if it has the arriving plane in sight.

The controller makes another radio call to the helicopter moments later: “PAT 25 pass behind the CRJ.” Seconds after that the two aircraft collide.

Police said multiple agencies were involved in a search and rescue operation in the Potomac River, which borders the airport.

The temperature in Washington DC on Wednesday night, local time, is expected to drop to a low of 2 degrees Celsius.

The airport said that all take-offs and landings had been halted as emergency personnel responded to an aircraft incident.

The National Transportation Safety Board said it was gathering more information on the incident.

There has not been a fatal US passenger airplane accident since February 2009, but a series of near-miss incidents in recent years have raised serious safety concerns.

American Airlines said it would provide more information as it became available to the company.

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