Virginia Plane Crash: Why Was It Flying in a No-Go Zone – When Did the Pilot Stop Responding?

US authorities are still investigating what happened to Cessna.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said today that U.S. authorities don’t yet know when the pilot of the private jet that crashed in Virginia stopped responding to calls from the control tower Sunday, or why he was flying in the strictly prohibited federal capital’s airspace. ).

The Pentagon captured two F-16 fighter jets that broke the sound barrier over Washington while chasing a Cessna Citation 560 that crashed in southwest Virginia.

“That will definitely be part of our investigation, and we’ll look at exactly when the pilot became unresponsive and why the plane was on that trajectory. We don’t know yet,” NTSB investigator Adam Gearhart told reporters at the crash site.

“It’s all on the table.”

He added that the Cessna’s wreckage was scattered over a wooded mountainous area and the search would be “difficult”. The NTSB will remove it and fly it to a safe location in Delaware, presumably using a helicopter.

“Basically, everything is on the table. The plane, its engines, weather, pilot skills, maintenance records. These are all issues that we are looking at,” he stressed.

A US official said the F-16s did not down the Cesnas.

In addition to the pilot, there were three more people on board the small plane. The Cessna was owned by Melbourne, Florida-based Encore Motors, and its owner, John Rampell, told The Washington Post that his daughter, granddaughter, and nanny were killed.

The US military tried to contact the pilot, who did not respond. The Cessna seems to be flying on autopilot.

The plane took off from Elizabethton Municipal Airport in Tennessee, bound for MacArthur Airport on Long Island, New York, about 80 kilometers east of Manhattan.

Source: RES-MPE