‘Beautiful’ NYC woman killed in DC plane crash ‘enriched lives with kindness, warmth’

A Brooklyn woman traveling for work aboard the American Airlines flight that collided with a military helicopter was remembered by her neighbor as “extremely smart,” beautiful and hardworking.

“I just thought the world of her,” the neighbor told The Post of Melissa Nicandri, 28, who moved into the Brooklyn Heights apartment in 2022.

“If we ever had any kind of [issue] in the building, she was on it,” the woman, who declined to give her name, added. “She was very assertive, like, ‘We’re going to fix this, we’ll take care of it.’”

She last spoke to Nicandri in a group chat with another neighbor, she recalled.

Residents of the Henry Street brownstone were told by the building manager Friday about the tragic news, and it kept the neighbor up through the night.

“I kept waking up and thinking about it … I mean, what are the odds?” she said.

Nicandri was one of the 67 people killed when American Airlines flight 5342, which took off from Wichita, Kansas on Wednesday for Washington, DC, and smashed into a Black Hawk helicopter on a training mission.

The Florida native was an analyst for Moody’s Ratings and was visiting a college in Kansas for work, Gothamist reported.

She was traveling with a colleague, Chris Collins, who was also killed, and was headed home on the connecting flight.

“Chris and Melissa were cherished colleagues who embodied our values and enriched our lives with kindness and warmth,” the company said in a statement.

Nicandri attended Vanderbilt University for her bachelor’s degree and then Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies for her master’s, according to her LinkedIn profile.

She spent free time volunteering, including for the Ronald McDonald House and Habitat for Humanity.

“She was everything that anyone could hope for with a daughter — beautiful, smart, funny, kind, and generous,” her parents, Peter and Stacie Nicandri of Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, said in a statement.

“Her future was so bright,” they added.

Nicandri’s aunt told The Post it was an “incredibly difficult time” for the family.

“She was never meant to be taken from us in this way,” Andrea Nicandri said. “We’re all in shock and disbelief.”

Her niece was a “very thoughtful, kind person,” she added.

Nicandri’s neighbor said she was often visited by friends and a long-term boyfriend who was studying outside of New York City but would come to visit her on weekends.

“She just seemed to me to have everything together,” the neighbor said. “She was very beautiful.”

“I just keep thinking about the last exchanges we had,” she added. “She didn’t know it, but she had less than a month to live.”