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

An American Airlines regional passenger jet was involved in a mid-air collision on Wednesday night with a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan Washington National Airport, officials said.

Fatal crashes of commercial aircraft in the U.S. have become a rarity. The deadliest recent crash was in 2009 near Buffalo, New York. All 45 passengers and the four crew members were killed when the Bombardier DHC-8 propeller plane crashed into a house.