Hours after the crash, rescuers arrived at the crash site in the rural Shenandoah Valley and found no survivors. Earlier, residents in Washington heard loud booms in the sky as a US military F-16 fighter jet was dispatched at supersonic speed to approach the passenger plane.

Unusual flight path

The Federal Aviation Administration said the Cessna Citation took off from Elizabethtown, Tennessee, on Sunday and was headed to Long Island’s MacArthur Airport. It remains unclear why the plane circled New York’s Long Island and headed toward Washington before crashing into mountainous terrain near Montebello, Virginia, around 3:30 p.m. Sunday local time.

It is also unclear why the pilot did not respond to authorities, why it crashed, or how many people were on board. The plane flew straight over Washington, D.C., without making any signals, even though it was technically flying over some of the most restricted airspace in the United States.

A U.S. military F-16 fighter jet was scrambled to warn the plane, but it did not respond to radio signals and then crashed, a U.S. official confirmed to the AP. The official was not authorized to discuss details of the military operation publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Flight tracking websites showed the plane descending rapidly in a spiral before crashing into the St. Mary’s wilderness. The North American Aerospace Defense Command later said in a statement that the F-16 was allowed to travel at supersonic speeds, causing a sonic boom heard in Washington and parts of Virginia and Maryland.

First information about the victims

Virginia State Police said officers and rescue crews were notified of the possible crash just before 4 p.m. and arrived on foot about four hours later. Police said no survivors were found.

The plane that crashed was registered to Encore Motors of Melbourne Inc., based in Florida. John Rumpel, who runs the company, told The New York Times that his daughter, her 2-year-old granddaughter, her nanny and the pilot were all on board. He said they were returning to their home in East Hampton, on Long Island, after visiting his home in North Carolina.

Rumpel, who is also a pilot, said he has not received much information from authorities and hopes his family is safe, adding that the plane may have lost pressure. “I don’t think they found any debris,” Rumpel said. “It was going down at 20,000 feet a minute, and no one can survive a crash at that speed.”

Recalling the death of Payne Stewart

The incident evoked memories of the 1999 crash of a small Learjet passenger plane that lost cabin pressure, causing the two crew members and passengers, including golfer Payne Stewart, to faint from lack of oxygen. The plane then flew freely for a long time before crashing into a South Dakota grassland, killing all six people on board. A US military F-16 fighter jet was also dispatched to track the plane as it lost control.

A documentary called Deadly Silence was later made about this very rare incident in the US aviation industry, showing the dramatic details of the accident, as well as the major investigation that authorities conducted to find out why the incident happened.

The investigation concluded that the loss of pressure caused the crew and passengers to faint after only about 15 seconds, but the cause of the loss of cabin pressure was not clearly determined. After this incident, some adjustments to US aviation safety regulations were made, including requiring pilots and crew to immediately put on breathing masks when there is a signal of loss of pressure.

Hoang Anh (according to AP, NYT, WK)