The pilot of the unresponsive private plane that sparked an interception by supersonic military fighter jets protecting
Washington, DC, was found slumped over in his seat, according to a source familiar with the incident.
The Cessna Citation crashed in a thickly wooded region near Waynesboro, Virginia, carrying a lone pilot and three
passengers, the Federal Aviation Administration said Monday. Authorities said there were no survivors.
Another source told CNN that crash investigators are mainly interested in hypoxia – a lack of oxygen in the blood – as
a possible explanation for why the pilot and passengers did not respond to attempts by air traffic controllers and
other civilian planes to contact the ill-fated airliner.
Hypoxia is an insidious risk of high-altitude flying that could have been caused by a decompression of the jet’s
pressurized interior, according to aviation experts. The airplane was traveling from East Tennessee to Long Island,
New York, at 34,000 feet, an altitude where pilots have 30 to 60 seconds to put on oxygen masks if pressure drops or
they risk becoming unconscious.
When F-16s approached the Cessna 560 Citation V around 3:20 p.m., the jet pilots used flares to attract the pilot’s
attention, according to a Sunday news release from the Continental US North American Aerospace Defense
Command Region.
“The pilot was unresponsive and the Cessna subsequently crashed near the George Washington National Forest,
Virginia,” according to a press release. “NORAD attempted to establish contact with the pilot until the aircraft
crashed.”
