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.

Officials say the conditions of the Potomac River are complicating recovery efforts of the bodies of the 67 presumed dead in a mid-air collision between American Airlines flight 5342 from Wichita and a military Black Hawk helicopter.