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.

A commercial plane with 60 passengers and four crew members on board collided with a military helicopter with a crew of three near Washington, D.C., on Wednesday night.