Jonathan Koziol, a retired Army chief warrant officer with more than 30 years of flight experience, told reporters that the flight was a nighttime qualification flight with an instructor pilot evaluating an experienced pilot on the flight routes that their unit routinely flies day and night around the Potomac River.

Divers return to the Potomac River as part of the recovery after the United States’ deadliest aviation disaster in almost a quarter century

Sixty-seven people are believed to have died after a passenger plane hit a military helicopter in mid-air near Washington DC's Ronald Reagan airport on Wednesday evening.