An American Airlines regional jet went down in the Potomac River near Washington, D.C.'s Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport after colliding with a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter on Wednesday night, with no survivors expected.

If changes aren't made, that near-miss becomes a mid-air collision,” one aviation safety expert said. “Unfortunately, that's what we had last night.”

An Army Black Hawk helicopter collided with a regional jet near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Wednesday evening, U.S. officials confirmed to ABC News.

Political leaders had warned about the dangers of Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Washington, D.C. months before an American Airlines flight collided with a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter on its approach to the airport.

An Army Black Hawk helicopter collided midair with an American Airlines flight from Wichita, Kansas, at Reagan National Airport on Wednesday.

The National Transportation Safety Board said the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder from the American Airlines jet that collided with the Black Hawk helicopter have been recovered from the wreckage in the Potomac River and are now at the NTSB labs for evaluation.

Questions remain over the mid-air collision between a jet, which was carrying 64 people, including the crew, and a military helicopter carrying three soldiers

""DCA is one of the most demanding airports in the world. It also has what’s known as ‘helicopter alley’ with hundreds of police, military, news and rescue helicopters criss-crossing the Potomac River,

Mapped: How American Airlines plane collided with Black Hawk army helicopter near Washington DC airport - There are likely no survivors of the crash as the rescue mission turned into a recovery operat

On the evening of January 29, a Bombardier CRJ700 passenger plane and a Black Hawk military helicopter collided midair near Ronald Reagan National Airport, a 10-15-minute ride from downtown Washington

Air crash investigations can take months, and federal investigators told reporters they would not speculate on the cause.