A lost private jet flying over Washington without responding to requests from air traffic controllers soon crashed in neighboring Virginia. A loud sonic boom, shortly after the business jet passed over the US capital, was heard in all areas adjacent to the District of Columbia.
Rescuers who arrived at the crash site in agricultural Shenandoah Valley County found no survivors among the Cessna passengers, law enforcement said.
The Cessna Citation business jet took off for Long Island’s MacArthur Airport from Elizabethtown, Tennessee, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. For unexplained reasons, the plane turned back over Long Island, New York, and veered south toward DC before crashing around 3:30 p.m. in the mountains near Montebello, Virginia.
At this time, it is not known why the pilot did not respond to requests from dispatchers and how many people were on board the plane. The cause of the accident is also unknown.
As the Cessna entered the airspace over Washington, DC, one of the most heavily controlled areas of the sky in the United States, a military fighter jet was dispatched to intercept it. This information was confirmed by an Associated Press source at the Pentagon. The agency’s interlocutor was not authorized to discuss details of the operation publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
According to data obtained from flight tracking websites, the plane plunged towards its crash site at a speed of more than 9 km per minute.
The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) says an F-16 fighter jet sent to intercept a Cessna went supersonic, causing a sonic boom that was heard by many in Washington DC and surrounding areas of Virginia and Maryland.
“During this mission, the NORAD aircraft also used flares that might have been visible to the public in an attempt to get the pilot’s attention,” the statement said. – Flares are used with the utmost respect for the safety of intercepted aircraft and people on the ground. Signal flares extinguish quickly and completely, their fall does not pose any danger to people on the ground.
Rescuers reached the crash site on foot around 8:00 p.m. No survivors were found, police said.
The plane that crashed near Montebello was registered to Florida-based Encore Motors of Melbourne Inc. John Rumpel, who runs the company, told The New York Times that his daughter, 2-year-old granddaughter, nanny and the pilot were on the jet. According to Rumpel, they were returning home to East Hampton, Long Island, after visiting his home in North Carolina.
In an interview with the publication, Rumpel suggested depressurization could have occurred in the cockpit.
This incident brought back memories of the 1999 Learjet crash. A depressurization occurred in the cockpit of the plane carrying professional golfer Payne Stewart. As a result, the plane flew over the territory of almost the entire country and crashed in South Dakota. Six people died in this accident.
The fighter jet took off to intercept the Cessna while President Joe Biden was golfing at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. Anthony Guglielmi, spokesman for the US Secret Service, said the incident did not affect the president’s Sunday schedule.
A White House spokesman said the president had been briefed on the plane crash.
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