Crashed plane lost contact with controllers during ascent
Only minutes into a doomed journey that ended on a remote Virginia mountain, the pilot of a business jet was not responding to air traffic control instructions and the situation was soon reported to a network that includes military, security and law enforcement agencies, according to U.S. federal aviation officials.
Despite being out of contact on its ascent on Sunday afternoon, the jet that had just taken off from a Tennessee airport continued toward its intended destination on New York’s Long Island, then turned to fly back to Virginia where it slammed into a mountain, killing the four people aboard.
Family and friends identified two of the victims as an entrepreneur known in New York real-estate circles and her twoyear-old daughter.
Outside aviation experts continued to speculate that the pilot likely lost consciousness from a lack of oxygen inside the jet when it climbed above 10,000 feet, the altitude that typically requires cabin pressurization.
“The most likely scenario right now is a pressurization failure or a mis-setting of the pressurization system,” said Alan Diehl, an aviation psychologist who previously worked for the Federal Aviation Administration, the National Transportation Safety Board and the U.S. Air Force. In the late 1960s, Diehl helped to design the original model of the plane, the Cessna Citation, that crashed in Virginia.
It’s unclear when the pilot stopped responding to air traffic controllers. But their last attempt to reach him occurred 15 minutes after takeoff, according to the FAA.
The plane could have surpassed 10,000 feet in just a few minutes, Diehl said. However, the pilot might have had to wait for some period of time after takeoff before he was cleared for higher altitudes.
Depending on the jet’s altitude, as well as the pilot’s age and health, he likely had minutes — or even less than a minute — to react as his brain suffered a decline in oxygen, Diehl said.
“The one other thing that they probably can’t eliminate at this point is some kind of medical issue,” Diehl said.
A heart attack, brain aneurysm and over-the-counter medications, such as antihistamines, can affect a pilot’s ability to fly the plane and recognize there may be a problem with the cabin’s oxygen levels and pressurization.
Fighter jet pilots sent to intercept the business jet reported that its pilot appeared slumped over and unresponsive, U.S. officials said Monday.
The plane took an erratic flight path — turning around over Long Island to fly directly over Washington — which prompted the military to scramble fighter jets. This caused a sonic boom heard in Washington, Maryland and Virginia.
John Rumpel, the owner of the plane, said his daughter, Adina Azarian, two-year-old granddaughter, Aria, and the girl’s nanny were the victims, along with the pilot. He said they were returning to their home on Long Island, after visiting his house in North Carolina.
Rumpel said new radios had been installed on the plane two or three weeks ago and the aircraft was equipped with emergency oxygen. Rumpel said he believed the pilot, who he identified as Jeff Hefner, probably lost consciousness from a lack of oxygen. Rumpel said Hefner had recently had a physical and he was not aware of any concerning medical conditions.
“He was top shelf, absolutely top shelf. I wouldn’t have had my daughter and my grandbaby fly with him if he wasn’t,” Rumpel said Tuesday.
Rumpel said he wondered if a flashing light on the plane that should have warned the pilot that he was losing oxygen somehow malfunctioned. “To the best of my knowledge, the emergency masks never dropped,” he said.
Rumpel also said it is common practice for pilots to put their destination, along with an “emergency return destination” into the auto pilot system, which would explain why the plane turned around and headed south again once it flew over its destination of MacArthur Airport on Long Island. He said the emergency return destination would have been the airport in Elizabethton, Tennessee, where the flight took off.