The incident has been likened to the infamous 1961 crash of Sabena Flight 548, in which the entire United States figure skating team, which was travelling to the World Figure Skating Championships in Prague, Czechoslovakia, were killed. This time, almost an entire generation of young elite skaters has been wiped out.

The director of 16-year-old Spencer Lane’s skating club said he was known for being, “very fun, very cerebral, a good thinker.”

U.S. figure skater Spencer Lane shared one last image of his trip to Wichita, Kansas, hours before the American Airlines plane on which he was flying crashed in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, Jan. 29.

Spencer Lane, a 16-year-old figure skater from Barrington, Rhode Island, was among the victims of a plane crash near Ronald Reagan National Airport outside of Washington, D.C. Wednesday night. He was traveling with his mother, Christine Lane, and other members from the Skating Club of Boston.

The young figure skaters whose lives were cut tragically short when an American Airlines flight collided with an Army helicopter and crashed into the Potomac River on Wednesday night were just beginning their journeys to stardom.

Spencer Lane, a figure skater, was on the doomed plane that crashed in the Potomac, reports say. He posted a photo to Instagram hours before.

A teenage figure skater who was killed when a helicopter crashed into American Airlines flight 5342 on Wednesday shared a now-haunting image from the plane.

John Donnelly, the chief of Washington's fire department, said at a news conference Thursday that 28 bodies have been found and efforts had shifted from "a search-and-rescue operation to a recovery operation.