Array
Flares, a «head-butt» maneuver and missiles at the ready: Those are some of the military’s options when a wayward aircraft raises alarms in U.S. airspace. All those options were in play on Sunday afternoon, when an unresponsive Cessna jet flew over Washington, D.C., and crashed in Virginia.
For officials in charge of Washington’s sensitive airspace, «their need to react is going to be much more significant than if the same event occurred over the central United States,» former Federal Aviation Administration official Michael J. McCormick tells NPR.
McCormick should know: He helped design and implement the protocols for the airspace around the U.S. capital. He is now an assistant professor and program coordinator at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
As the plane set off military and defense alarms, it also triggered a series of questions from residents, many of whom heard and even felt a sonic boom after F-16 fighter jets were ordered to intercept the plane.
«Six F-16s from three different air bases» were launched, according to John Kirby, White House National Security Council spokesperson. «They had to turn on the speed to get to him, which is why people here in the District area heard a sonic boom,» he said on Monday.
The emergency ended in tragedy: The pilot and three passengers died on the plane that went down more than a mile from the Blue Ridge Parkway, the Virginia State Police told NPR via email.
Emergency crews found wreckage of the Cessna business jet «in a wilderness area» west of Wintergreen, Va., according to Wintergreen Fire and Rescue.What went wrong aboard the Cessna aircraft?
As McCormick says, «It’s very unfortunate, and from what’s available in open press, I can see that it was a tremendous loss of life, of almost an entire family.»
The Cessna Citation business jet was registered to Florida-based Encore Motors of Melbourne Inc. As The Associated Press reports, «John Rumpel, who runs the company, told The New York Times that his daughter, 2-year-old granddaughter, her nanny and the pilot were aboard the plane. They were returning to their home in East Hampton, on Long Island, after visiting his house in North Carolina.»
Immediately after he heard about the unresponsive plane, McCormick says, he believed a lack of air pressure inside the plane was likely to blame.
If a plane rapidly loses air pressure at around 35,000 feet, anyone inside would have mere seconds to put on an oxygen mask before losing what is known as «useful consciousness.» The change would be more gradual if the craft lost pressure over a longer period.
«Everything I’ve read about it since then supports that,» McCormick says, adding that he believes the aircraft lost pressure on its northbound journey from Elizabethton, Tenn.
