In particular, the family of the owner of the private jet was on board. As of Monday morning, the crash site could not be located.
By Le Figaro with AFP
Published 6/5/2023 at 8:03 AM, updated 6/5/2023 at 8:56 AM
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F-16 military fighter jets of the Portuguese Air Force take part in NATO’s Baltic Air Policing mission in Lithuanian airspace near Siauliai, May 23, 2023. Image by drawing. PETRAS MALUKAS / AFP
A sonic boom rang out in Washington on Sunday, June 4, as two warplanes attempted to intercept an unresponsive plane before it crashed in the US state of Virginia, officials told AFP. Residents of the United States capital and its suburbs have reported hearing a thunderous noise that rattled windows and walls for miles and sparked many questions on social media.
Two F-16 fighter jets were mobilized because a Cessna 560 Citation V private jet failed to respond over Washington and northern Virginia, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) said in a press release. The two fighter jets took off from Andrews Base in Maryland, a Pentagon official told AFP, to join the plane, which then crashed in a mountainous area in the southwest of the country in Virginia.
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A family on board
President Joe Biden, who was in the area this Sunday, had been briefed on the incident, a White House official told reporters, without specifying whether precautionary measures had been taken. According to publicly available data, the aircraft was registered with Encore Motors of Melbourne, Florida.
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Its owner, John Rumpel, told The Washington Post Daily that his entire family was on board, including his daughter, as well as a young child and a nanny. “We don’t know anything about the crash,” he explained. “We’re speaking to the FAA now (…) I need to keep the line available.” According to American Civil Aviation (FAA), the civil aircraft took off from Elizabethton, Tennessee (east) to Long Island, in upstate New York (northeast ) to reach.
However, flight tracking website Flightradar24 said the plane turned around after flying over Long Island and headed south over Washington and Virginia. According to several American media, the crash site could not be localized so far. According to the Washington Post, investigators hope to be on site Monday.
NORAD fighter jets “were allowed to fly at supersonic speeds and a sonic boom was heard by residents of the area,” the command said in a statement. The plane also threw decoys to get the pilot’s attention. NORAD said it attempted to make contact with the pilot before the plane crashed and intercepted him around 3:20 p.m. local time (9:20 p.m. Paris).
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The plane eventually crashed around 3:30 p.m. local time (9:30 p.m. Paris time) near Montebello, Virginia, about 170 miles (270 km) southwest of Washington, the FAA reported. The military did not shoot down the plane, several US media reported. No information has yet been released about the pilot or any passengers on the plane. The Capitol and its complex buildings in Washington “were briefly placed on high alert until the plane left the area,” Capitol Police said on Twitter.
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About 50 miles east of the federal capital, the City of Annapolis Emergency Management Office reassured residents on Twitter that the crash was “caused by an authorized Department of Defense.” This flight caused a sonic boom. Sonic booms occur when a device breaks the sound barrier. They can take the populace by surprise and cause damage, particularly by smashing windows.