Several figure skaters, along with their coaches and families, were traveling on an American Airlines plane that crashed into an Army helicopter near Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington D.C.

The young figure skaters whose lives were cut tragically short when an American Airlines flight collided with an Army helicopter and crashed into the Potomac River on Wednesday night were just beginni

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