The private jet had triggered the intervention of two F-16 fighter jets, which in turn created a massive sonic boom over Washington. On Monday, US authorities announced the deaths of the four occupants of the plane. “No survivors were found,” when rescuers walked to the crash site in Virginia just before 8 p.m. (2 a.m. French time), police in that eastern state said, ending the search.
Two F-16 fighter jets were mobilized over Washington and northern Virginia due to the lack of response from this private jet, the Cessna 560 Citation V, the United States Aerospace Defense Command in North America (NORAD) reported Sunday in a press release release. The pilot of one of the F-16s saw the Cessna pilot slumped in his cockpit, the Washington Post reported Monday, indicating a loss of consciousness.
Depressurization of the device?
The hunters fired decoys into the sky to get his attention, but to no avail. According to the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the plane crashed in a mountainous area in southwest Virginia, about 270 km from Washington. The intervention of the hunters, which caused a thunderous noise when crossing the sound barrier, made windows and walls tremble for kilometers and especially in the federal capital and caused many questions in the social networks.
According to several aviation experts, the Cessna pilot may have lost consciousness due to a loss of pressure in the plane. One such cause was the reason for a similar 1999 crash of a Learjet-developed aircraft that killed golfer Payne Stewart and four other people. In that accident, the Learjet, scheduled to connect Florida with Texas, had flown on autopilot for hours before running out of fuel and crashing in South Dakota, more than 1,500 km from its intended destination.
“My family is no longer in this world”
On Sunday, the owner of the company in whose name the Cessna was registered, John Rumpel, told the Washington Post that his entire family was on board, including his daughter, a grandchild and a nanny. In response to messages of condolence on his Facebook page, his wife Barbara Rumpel wrote: “My family is gone, my daughter and my granddaughter. »
According to the FAA, the jet departed from Elizabethton, Tennessee (east) to reach Long Island, in upstate New York (northeast). However, flight tracking website Flightradar24 said the plane turned around after passing Long Island and headed south, passing over Washington and Virginia. According to Capitol Police, the US Capitol and adjacent buildings in Washington were “briefly placed on high alert until the plane cleared the area.”