On Monday, federal authorities were investigating what caused an unresponsive private plane to fly over Washington, D.C. Sunday, prompting a response by military aircraft that caused a sonic boom to be heard across much of the region before the small plane crashed in Virginia, causing death. the four people on board.
The private business jet went down near Montebello, Va., the National Transportation Safety Board said. A Virginia State Police spokeswoman said in a statement Monday that emergency responders were able to reach the wreckage on foot about four hours after receiving a report of a plane crash.
John Rumpel, who runs Encore Motors of Melbourne, a Florida-based company that owns the plane, said in a telephone interview Monday that his daughter, Adina Azarian; his 2-year-old granddaughter; his nanny and the pilot were on the plane and did not survive.
The plane, a Cessna 560 Citation V, crashed “almost straight on and at high speed,” he said, adding that the impact left a crater and debris spread more than 150 meters. Mr. Rumpel had said Sunday that they were returning home to East Hampton, New York, after a four-day visit to their home in North Carolina.
Investigators were left Monday to figure out what went wrong with the flight, which had taken off from Elizabethton Municipal Airport in Elizabethton, Tenn., at about 1:15 p.m. and was bound for Long Island MacArthur Airport in Ronkonkoma, New York.
Fifteen minutes after takeoff, the pilot was ordered by air traffic control to level off at 31,000 feet, but he did not respond, said Eric Weiss, a spokesman for the NTSB. Instead, the plane continued to climb until it reached a cruising altitude of 34,000 feet, he said.
After reaching Long Island, the plane did not attempt to land, instead turning around and heading back in the direction it had originally taken off, according to flight tracking website FlightAware.
With the plane’s pilot unresponsive, six F-16s were scrambled from bases in Maryland, New Jersey and South Carolina, said Michael Dougherty, a spokesman for the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD.
Two F-16s from Joint Base Andrews in Maryland made initial contact with the plane, Mr. Dougherty. For half an hour, he said, the F-16s used a combination of maneuvers and flares in an unsuccessful attempt to get the pilot’s attention.
Pilots who “visually inspected the Cessna” while it was in flight confirmed the pilot of the private jet was unresponsive and “went down,” said Capt. Alexandra Hejduk, a NORAD spokeswoman and member of the Canadian military .
In a statement Sunday, NORAD said fighter jets responding to the unresponsive plane had been “authorized to travel at supersonic speeds,” which would have produced the boom heard in the region, even in the suburbs of Virginia and Maryland.
Officials determined the Cessna did not pose a threat and crashed in Virginia around 3:30 p.m., according to the Federal Aviation Administration. He was not shot down, officials said. A White House official said President Biden was briefed on the incident.
Adam Gerhardt, an NTSB investigator, told reporters Monday that the agency would be on the ground for at least three to four days. He said the remains were “very fragmented” and described the area as rural and mountainous.
“It’s going to be a very difficult crash site,” he said.
Gerhardt said it is not yet known whether the plane had a cockpit voice recorder or a flight data recorder, although he said the plane was not supposed to have that equipment.
Mr. Weiss, the NTSB spokesman, said one of the possibilities the agency planned to examine was whether the plane might have lost cabin pressure, causing hypoxia, or oxygen deprivation, for those on board.
Mr. Rumpel, who is also a pilot, said on Sunday that he had little information about the circumstances of the crash but hoped that his daughter, granddaughter and others on board had not been hurt. His voice breaking, he said that if the plane lost pressurization, “everyone would have gone to sleep and never woke up.”
“It was descending at 20,000 feet per minute, and no one could survive a crash at that speed,” said Mr. Rumpel
Ms. Azarian, 49, worked as an agent for Keller Williams, the real estate firm, in New York City and Long Island. The company said in a message to colleagues that his death was a “deep loss”.
On Sunday, people reported hearing a loud boom in the Washington area on social media. Many said the noise sounded like an explosion, and some said the boom was so loud it shook their homes. A sound boom it is caused by an object moving faster than sound, or about 750 miles per hour at sea level.
Rafael Olivieri, 62, said he was at his home in Annandale, Va., when he heard a “loud, very short sound” that shook his house. Mr Olivieri ran outside, where his neighbors were also trying to figure out what had happened. “My first thing was to look at the sky,” he said. “I was very worried.”
More than 30 miles northeast, in Edgewater, Maryland, Joseph Krygiel, 47, also heard the boom. He said he was in his basement shortly after 3pm when the whole house shook. “I thought it was an important thing,” said Mr. Krygiel.
Amanda Holpuch, Derrick Bryson Taylor and Eric Schmitt contributed to the report.
