US federal investigators will try to determine the circumstances surrounding a private plane with an unconscious pilot that crashed in Virginia on Sunday after flying over the nation’s capital, prompting the military to deploy two fighter jets.
Virginia State Police said rescuers arrived at the crash site on foot Sunday night and found no survivors.
The plane had taken off from an airport in Tennessee and was almost at its planned destination of New York when it turned around and headed back to the southwest. The Federal Aviation Administration said the plane crashed in a mountainous area near Montebello, Virginia, about 200 kilometers southwest of Washington.
Both the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating the incident.
The North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) said the fighter jets were “cleared to travel at supersonic speeds and that residents of the region may have heard a sonic boom.” The planes also fired flares to try to get the attention of the pilot of the Cessna 560 Citation V jet, NORAD said in a statement.
The White House said that President Joe Biden, who was golfing at Joint Base Andrews at the time, “was briefed on the incident” and that the sound of the sonic boom could be heard faintly on the base.
The plane was registered to Encore Motors of Melbourne Inc., and The Washington Post and The New York Times reported that company owner John Rumpel said four people were on board the plane, including his daughter, granddaughter and the son’s nanny.
[Parte de la información de esta historia provino de The Associated Press y Reuters]
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