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The pilot who flew the “ghost plane” that crashed in Virginia on Sunday was seen slumped over in his seat by military jets that flew at supersonic speeds to catch up to the doomed flight.
The Department of Defense deployed six F-16 fighter jets out of Joint Base Andrews to race toward the private Cessna after it veered into restricted space around DC — and one of the pilots got close enough to the errant aircraft to peer into the cockpit window and see that the pilot was out cold in the left seat, the said.
It appears that a catastrophic event may have occurred about 15 minutes into the flight, as the jet was flying over Virginia for the first time, two sources familiar with the crash investigation told the outlet.
Aviation experts have suggested the plane may have lost pressurization, leading to the pilot and his three passengers losing consciousness while the aircraft eerily continued on autopilot around 34,000 feet until it ran out of fuel and nosedived into a mountainous, heavily wooded area around 3:30 p.m., killing all aboard.
The pilot, who has yet to be identified, was flying from Tennessee to the Hamptons on Long Island with realtor Adina Azarian, her 2-year-old daughter, Aria, and the tot’s nanny when the plane made a near-180 degree turn as it got to New York.
The plane likely was on autopilot, given that it made no attempt to descend at Long Island’s MacArthur Airport and instead appeared to go back to Tennessee, said Jeff Guzzetti, a former Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board investigator.
