An unresponsive airliner that flew above Washington, D.C., on Sunday, June 4, caused military fighter jets to intercept it at hypersonic speeds, generating a deafening sonic boom before it crashed in Virginia with no survivors.
The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) announced in a statement that it dispatched F-16 fighter jets to respond to the unresponsive Cessna 560 Citation V aircraft above Washington, D.C. and Virginia.
According to a US official, the 113th Fighter Wing of the D.C. National Guard executed the scramble.
“The NORAD aircraft were authorized to travel at supersonic speeds, and a sonic boom may have been heard by residents of the region,” NORAD stated, adding that flares, which could have been seen by the public, were also employed to draw the pilot’s attention.
The plane had taken “a strange flight path,” according to the US official.
There were no survivors discovered when a plane that caused a fighter jet scramble crashed in Virginia.
According to the Federal Aviation Administration, the Cessna took off from Elizabethton Municipal Airport in Elizabethton, Tennessee, and was headed to Long Island MacArthur Airport in New York.
Flight trackers showed the plane going north from Tennessee to Long Island before turning around and flying straight down to Washington, D.C.
According to The Associated Press, the plane’s trackers showed it descending quickly before crashing, plunging at one point at a rate of more than 30,000 feet per minute.
The Cessna was intercepted by fighter jets around 3:20 p.m. ET. The pilot remained unresponsive throughout NORAD’s attempts to contact him, and the plane eventually crashed near Virginia’s George Washington Forest, according to the statement.
There were no survivors discovered when a plane that caused a fighter jet scramble crashed in Virginia.
The jet crashed into rugged terrain outside Montebello, Virginia, according to the FAA. According to a US official, the Cessna was not shot down by the F-16s.
Capitol Police stated in a statement that they were monitoring the jet and had temporarily placed the Capitol Complex “on elevated alert until the airplane left the area.”
Virginia State Police were notified of the incident and promptly deployed to find the wreckage, which they arrived at on foot soon before 8 p.m., according to police.
Mountainous terrain and fog hampered search operations, according to police.
It was unclear how many people were on board the jet at the time.
The FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board have acknowledged that they are investigating the tragedy together.
