Citation Down in SW Virginia

[PHXPhlyer]

Small aircraft crashes in southwest Virginia

https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/04/us/south ... index.html

A small aircraft crashed in southwest Virginia Sunday afternoon, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement.

The aircraft, a Cessna Citation, took off from Elizabethton Municipal Airport in Elizabethton, Tennessee, and was bound for Long Island MacArthur Airport in New York.

The plane crashed into a mountainous terrain in a “sparsely populated area,” the FAA said.

The FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating the incident.

PP

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Citations are, from my experience, very easy to fly and very reliable..
Appears to be only a few minutes after takeoff - the SW Virginia border is 31 miles from Elizabethtown, TN
I'm guessing the Blue Ridge Mountains are the area.
CFIT?
Oxygen?

[PHXPhlyer]

15 miles from Elizabethton Municipal Airport closest point of TN-VA stateline, so CFIT unlikely unless dealing with engine failure or something similar.

PP

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Might have taken the scenic route for a bit before planning on climbing for the main route.
I've done that at the request of the owner for his guests in back.
Don't know the weather though.

[PHXPhlyer]

Well...This just got stranger!

US fighter jets scrambled to respond to aircraft that ultimately crashed in Virginia, US official says

https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/04/us/south ... index.html

US F-16 fighter jets scrambled Sunday to respond to an aircraft that ultimately crashed in southwest Virginia, according to a US official.

It’s not clear if the aircraft violated restricted airspace near Washington, DC, or if there was an emergency on board.

The F-16s did not shoot down the aircraft that crashed, the official said.

The military aircraft caused a sonic boom heard across the Washington, DC, metropolitan region.

“We are aware of reports from communities throughout the National Capital Region of a loud ‘boom’ this afternoon,” DC Homeland Security & Emergency Management said on Twitter.

There is no threat at this time, the agency added.

Earlier, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement that a Cessna Citation crashed in southwest Virginia Sunday.

The aircraft took off from Elizabethton Municipal Airport in Elizabethton, Tennessee, and was bound for Long Island MacArthur Airport in New York.

The plane crashed into a mountainous terrain in a “sparsely populated area”, according to FAA.

The City of Annapolis Office of Emergency Management said the sound “was caused by an authorized DOD flight. This flight caused a sonic boom.”

PP

[PHXPhlyer]

D.C. rattled by boom from fighter jets sent to check private plane
The Cessna's pilot appeared to be incapacitated before the aircraft crashed Sunday afternoon in Virginia, officials said.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/so ... -rcna87651

The Washington, D.C.,-region was rattled Sunday afternoon by a blast that officials said was a sonic boom from fighter jets scrambling to investigate a private plane's unexpected flight path.

Pilots from the “Capital Guardians,” a unit of the 113th Wing of the D.C. National Guard, determined that the pilot was incapacitated, a senior government official said. The fighters shadowed the Cessna until it crashed, the official said.


The Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement that the Cessna Citation went down in a sparsely populated area of southwest Virginia about 3 p.m.

In the D.C. region, rattled residents took to Twitter to report hearing some sort of explosion in the area around 3 p.m. on Sunday.

The Annapolis, Maryland, Office of Emergency Management tweeted that the boom "was caused by an authorized DOD flight." Military officials have not publicly connected the two events.

“There is no threat at this time,” the DC Homeland Security & Emergency Management said in a tweet.

The aircraft took off from from Elizabethton Municipal Airport in Elizabethton, Tenn., bound for New York's Long Island MacArthur Airport.

The fate of anyone onboard was unknown. The plane was registered to a corporation based in Melbourne, Florida.

The National Transportation Safety Board was investigating.

The senior government official said the plane may have run out of fuel before impact, about 2 miles northeast of Montebello, Virginia.

The aircraft may have overflown its destination at an altitude of 34,000, then turned southwest, the official said. At 2 p.m. it ceased radio contact, and the FAA alerted an ongoing security conference call that includes the military and the Department of Homeland Security, the official said. Then the fighters were scrambled.

Local police departments including the Metropolitan Police Department and the Bowie Police Department in Maryland said they sent units to neighborhoods around the area in an unsuccessful search for the source of the sound.

PP

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

No comms would scramble the jets, since the direct track Elizabethtown-Long Island would be less than half a mile from The White House.

Sounds like it reached the overhead of the destination, then the nav kit and autopilot were trying to fly it back to the start point, and it ran out of fuel halfway back.

Oxygen failure remains my guess.

I think a comms fail at 2pm, given the crash at 3pm, puts the comms failure between Washington and New York on the original route,hence why the fighters weren't scrambled the first time past DC.

[PHXPhlyer]

Stranger still...
The aircraft may have overflown its destination at an altitude of 34,000, then turned southwest, the official said.
I'm sure radar data will sort it out.

PP

[PHXPhlyer]

US fighter jets scrambled to respond to aircraft that ultimately crashed in Virginia, US official says

https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/04/us/south ... index.html

US F-16 fighter jets scrambled Sunday to respond to an aircraft that ultimately crashed in southwest Virginia, according to a US official.

It’s not clear if the aircraft violated restricted airspace near Washington, DC, or if there was an emergency on board, but the official added the F-16s did not shoot down the aircraft and that it is typical for the Federal Aviation Administration to call in jets if someone is flying unsafely.

The pilot of the civilian aircraft that crashed was unresponsive when the F-16 fighter jets attempted to make contact, according to a news release from the Continental US North American Aerospace Defense Command Region.

The F-16 jets were “authorized to travel at supersonic speeds,” which resulted in a sonic boom heard in the Washington, DC, area.

The F-16s used flares “in an attempt to draw attention from the pilot,” the release added.

The civilian aircraft, a Cessna 560 Citation V, was intercepted by the NORAD jets around 3:20 p.m. and ultimately crashed near the George Washington National Forest in Virginia.

“NORAD attempted to establish contact with the pilot until the aircraft crashed,” the release said.

Four people were on board the aircraft, which overshot its planned destination by 315 miles before crashing, sources familiar with the investigation said.

Search efforts were still underway by state and local authorities Sunday evening, Virginia State Police told CNN.

State police were notified around 3:50 p.m. of a possible aircraft crash in the Staunton/Blue Ridge Parkway region, the agency said. Nothing has been located at this time, it added.

Sonic boom heard across region
The military aircraft caused a sonic boom heard across the Washington, DC, metropolitan region.

“We are aware of reports from communities throughout the National Capital Region of a loud ‘boom’ this afternoon,” DC Homeland Security & Emergency Management said on Twitter.

There is no threat at this time, the agency added.

Earlier, the FAA said in a statement that a Cessna Citation crashed in southwest Virginia Sunday.

The aircraft took off from Elizabethton Municipal Airport in Elizabethton, Tennessee, and was bound for Long Island MacArthur Airport in New York.

The plane crashed into a mountainous terrain in a “sparsely populated area”, according to FAA.

The City of Annapolis Office of Emergency Management said the sound “was caused by an authorized DOD flight. This flight caused a sonic boom.”

The US Secret Service said they did not alter their posture for keeping President Joe Biden secure after the incident. Biden was golfing at the Andrews Air Force Base golf course near Joint Base Andrews in Maryland.

The incident “had no impact on Secret Service,” spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi said in a Sunday statement.

PP

[Ex-Ascot]

The civilian aircraft, a Cessna 560 Citation V, was intercepted by the NORAD jets around 3:20 p.m. and ultimately crashed near the George Washington National Forest in Virginia. “The pilot was unresponsive and the Cessna subsequently crashed near the George Washington National Forest, Virginia,” the release said

[Ex-Ascot]

Fox:

Oxygen failure remains my guess.

Guess that you mean pressurisation problem causing oxygen depletion.

[talmacapt]

I wondered whether the aircraft type was the same as the Payne Stewart accident.

Apparently not, that was a Learjet.

[OneHungLow]

Reminiscent in some ways (not necessarily in negligent root cause though) as the troubling end to Helios 522.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Ex-A - Yes, thank you for the correction.

[PHXPhlyer]

Pilot of unresponsive private jet that crashed and killed 4 was seen slumped over, source says

https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/05/us/virgi ... index.html

The pilot of the unresponsive private jet that triggered an interception by supersonic military fighter jets protecting Washington, DC, was observed slumped over in his seat, a source familiar with the response told CNN.

The lone pilot and three passengers were aboard the Cessna Citation that crashed in a heavily wooded area near Waynesboro, Virginia, the Federal Aviation Administration said Monday. There were no survivors, authorities said.

Another source told CNN that crash investigators are most interested in hypoxia – a shortage of oxygen in the blood – as a reason why the pilot and passengers didn’t respond to attempts by air traffic controllers and even other civilian aircraft to contact the ill-fated plane.

Hypoxia is an insidious risk of flying at high altitude and could have been brought on by a decompression of the Cessna Citation jet’s pressurized cabin, aviation experts say. The flight was cruising from East Tennessee to Long Island, New York, at 34,000 feet, an altitude where pilots have 30 to 60 seconds to don oxygen masks when pressure drops or risk falling unconscious.

When F-16s reached the Cessna around 3:20 p.m., the jet pilots set off flares in an effort to get the pilot’s attention, a Sunday news release from the Continental US North American Aerospace Defense Command Region said.

“The pilot was unresponsive and the Cessna subsequently crashed near the George Washington National Forest, Virginia,” the release said. “NORAD attempted to establish contact with the pilot until the aircraft crashed.”

The FAA lost contact with the jet just 15 minutes after it took off, according to a statement from the agency and data from air travel tracking website FlightAware.

Approximately eight minutes after losing contact, the agency contacted the “Domestic Events Network” that consists of the military, national security, homeland security and other law enforcement agencies, according to the FAA statement.

Also key to investigators, a source familiar with the investigation says, is the function of the plane’s autopilot. The flight turned around and kept flying for more than 300 miles before crashing in rural Virginia.

Near the rugged scene Monday, National Transportation Safety Board investigator in charge Adam Gerhardt told reporters the agency’s probe will ask: “When exactly did the pilot become unresponsive? And why did the airplane fly the flight track that it did fly?”

The Cessna left a “crater” in the ground and few clues as to why it went down, officials said Monday.

Four first responders, who spoke on the condition they were not identified, described a grisly scene at the crash site.

There were perhaps four recognizable pieces of wreckage from the plane, which they believe impacted the ground at a very steep angle, they said. “There was nothing really bigger than your arm,” said one.

They also found signs of human remains.
.
No survivors found at Virginia plane crash site after US fighter jets attempted to intercept its unresponsive pilot, police say
NTSB officials will spend the next few days processing evidence at the crash site, before the wreckage is helicoptered to a secure facility in Delaware, Gerhardt told reporters Monday.

The plane was not required to carry “black boxes,” devices used to record flight data, but investigators will still search for them in hopes that they were installed.

Gerhardt said at this very early stage in the investigation, “basically everything is on the table,” when it comes to determining the cause.

The civilian aircraft flew from Elizabethton, Tennessee, past its destination – New York’s Long Island MacArthur Airport – and then turned back before eventually crashing in Virginia on Sunday afternoon, according to NORAD and LiveATC.net.

Air traffic controllers, fighter jets, and even other civilian pilots frantically tried to contact the unresponsive crew of the Cessna jet by radio as it barreled toward Washington, DC, at 34,000 feet, audio from LiveATC.net revealed.

No survivors were found at the crash site Sunday night, Virginia State Police said, noting their identities will be released when they become available.

The details of why the plane veered so far off course and what caused the crash are still unclear. First responders said the crash site is amid steep, mountainous terrain that is difficult to reach on foot.

The US Capitol complex was placed on an “elevated alert” when the plane flew near the area on Sunday afternoon, US Capitol Police said in a statement.

F-16 jets were “authorized to travel at supersonic speeds” as they raced to make contact with the aircraft, a Cessna 560 Citation V, according to the Continental US North American Aerospace Defense Command Region news release.

Six F-16s launched from three bases, White House National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby said Monday. Two jets from Joint Base Andrews were first to intercept the private plane, he said.

The F-16s did not shoot down the aircraft, a US official told CNN, noting it is typical for the FAA to call in jets if someone is flying unsafely.

The jets’ extraordinary speed caused a sonic boom across the Washington, DC, area, officials said. That means the jets were traveling faster than the speed of sound, creating shock waves that caused a sudden and resounding boom, startling some residents on the ground.

“The house rocked, the windows rattled, and it was done, like that. We were obviously freaked out a little bit,” Chuck Martin, who felt the boom in Fairfax County, Virginia, told CNN affiliate WJLA. “I started calling the police. Their nonemergency line was busy forever. When I finally got through, they said, ‘Oh, this DOD aircraft went supersonic, which sounded a little bit strange.’”

Residents in Maryland also reported hearing the boom.

“Our Ring notifications were going crazy with so many different options. Was it the Navy? Or was it a sonic boom? Or was it an earthquake?” Sandy Abuarja, who lives in Gambrills, Maryland, told CNN affiliate WBAL.

Others were concerned about where the sound came from, particularly because of their proximity to the nation’s capital. “It was really quiet, and then we woke up, and it was like a really sudden … It didn’t shake the ground, but it was a little too loud,” Gambrills resident Ahreum Kindess told WBAL. “I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I live right next to DC. What was that?’”

State and local law enforcement in Virginia searched the area for hours after being notified of a possible crash near the northern city of Staunton, the agency said.

First responders reached the crash site around 8 p.m. Sunday night, state police spokesperson Corinne Geller confirmed. Augusta County Sheriff Donald Smith said Monday that “extremely steep” and rough terrain made it difficult to get to the site, which was at the top of a mountain about 1.5 miles from a road.

The private aircraft is registered to Encore Motors of Melbourne, Inc., a company based in Florida, according to FAA records.

John Rumpel, whose wife Barbara is listed as the president of the company, told CNN they own Encore. The husband confirmed Barbara Rumpel is safe, but declined to comment further.

John Rumpel’s daughter, a 2-year-old granddaughter and her nanny were onboard the plane, Rumpel told The New York Times. The family was returning home to East Hampton, New York, after a four-day trip to his home in North Carolina, he told the newspaper.

“My family is gone, my daughter and granddaughter,” Barbara Rumpel wrote in response to a post on her Facebook profile in which others were asking if she was on the plane.

Plane flew over US capital area
As the aircraft veered off course Sunday afternoon, it passed over Washington, DC, and was not responding to efforts to make contact, prompting the F-16 jets to respond.

US Capitol Police placed the Capitol complex on an “elevated alert” as the aircraft passed through the region, the agency said.

“This afternoon, our officials were working closely with our federal partners to monitor an unresponsive pilot who was flying an airplane near the National Capital Region. The U.S. Capitol Complex was briefly placed on an elevated alert until the airplane left the area,” a statement from the department said.

It’s unclear whether the aircraft entered restricted airspace.

President Joe Biden was golfing at the Andrews Air Force Base golf course near Maryland’s Joint Base Andrews when the sonic boom resounded through Washington. The US Secret Service said it did not alter its posture for keeping President Biden secure after the fighter jets were scrambled.

The president was briefed on the incident, according to a White House official.

PP

[Ex-Ascot]

In these cases one wonders if the pilot had undergone decompression training the end result would have been different.

I disagree with the above 30 - 60 seconds to put on oxygen masks. It is longer. They were at FL340 I have 'banged' up to 43.000' and still had time to draw an elephant. Well, that is what it was supposed to be.

[OneHungLow]

In these cases one wonders if the pilot had undergone decompression training the end result would have been different.

I disagree with the above 30 - 60 seconds to put on oxygen masks. It is longer. They were at FL340 I have 'banged' up to 43.000' and still had time to draw an elephant. Well, that is what it was supposed to be.

Time of useful consciousness. Averages of course and depends on health of pilot etc. etc.

TUC.JPG (53.95 KiB) Viewed 425 times

[Ex-Ascot]

Thank you OHL. The definition of useful consciousness is debatable though. At 35,000' if you realised that you were hypoxic you would I think have more that 60 secs to usefully put on your oxygen mask. Having been through this three times I know that I was still useful after 60 secs. Guess that everyone is different. A sherpa would be good for an hour!

[Mrs Ex-Ascot]

It's all very well talking about useful consciousness times, but the problem is that unless you have experienced hypoxia you do not know what your personal syptoms are. That is why the military put you through it under controlled conditions.

[OneHungLow]

It's all very well talking about useful consciousness times, but the problem is that unless you have experienced hypoxia you do not know what your personal syptoms are. That is why the military put you through it under controlled conditions.

My useful consciousness time varies at sea level these days!