2023-06-21 20:39:04
The pilot of the light private plane that caused a security alert on June 4 by flying over restricted airspace near Washington before crashing, killing all passengers, did not respond to air traffic control minutes later the start of the flight, investigators said Wednesday.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said that 12 minutes into the flight that killed four people, a controller cleared the Cessna 560 to fly at 34,000 feet and the pilot read back the clearance.
Three minutes later, the controller changed the altitude clearance, but the pilot did not respond and made no further radio messages.
The NTSB said the cockpit voice recorder has not been found. The plane crashed in a mountainous, forested area in southwestern Virginia after taking off from Elizabethton, Tennessee, at 1:13 p.m., leaving behind extremely fragmented debris, scattered around a main crater showing traces fire after impact.
The Department of Defense launched F-16 fighters, which created a sonic boom over the US capital as they chased the Cessna.
The pilot killed was Jeff Hefner, a retired Southwest Airlines flight captain and member of the pilots’ union board, who had logged 34,500 flight hours. The aircraft owner’s daughter, granddaughter and a nanny were also killed.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said it reported the pilot’s lack of response to controllers in the National Event Network, which includes military, security and law enforcement agencies, around 1:36 p.m., but the plane was not intercepted until 3:20 p.m.
The NTSB said the Cessna 560, after flying over MacArthur Airport on Long Island in New York, continued southwest on a course of approximately 240 degrees and showed little deviation or of altitude change until 3:22 p.m. when he began a rapid spiral descent to the right.
The crash is reminiscent of other incidents involving unresponsive pilots.
In 1999, golfer Payne Stewart died along with four other people after the plane he was in traveled thousands of miles with the pilot and passengers unresponsive. The plane eventually crashed in South Dakota, leaving no survivors.
In the case of Stewart’s flight, the aircraft lost cabin pressure, causing the occupants to lose consciousness from lack of oxygen.
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