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.

Air traffic controllers asked Flight 5342 to switch runways when coming in to land. Black box recordings from the jet and the military helicopter it collided with will help reveal whether this contributed to the accident.