Officials with the NTSB are
on the ground
in Stanton, Virginia, investigating
what led to a private plane crash,
a plane
that just before
the crash
was intercepted by us
fighter jets
for violating restricted airspace
over Washington, D.C.
The plane was a Cessna five 60 citation
similar to what you're looking at here.
It took off from an airport
in Elizabeth,
ten, ten,
Tennessee at one 13 yesterday afternoon.
It was bound for Long Island,
New York, you see there.
But according to flight data,
the plane never landed
and instead
it turned around over Long Island.
And then at 305 P.
M, it flew over restricted airspace.
U.S.
Capitol Police
placed the capital complex
on an elevated alert
and officials tried
but were unable to make contact
with the pilot.
That is one.
F-16s were scrambled to intercept
the plane
when they were author
and they were authorized to travel
at supersonic speeds
in order to get there in time,
which created the sonic boom
that was heard and felt
across the Washington area.
According to
officials, those F-16s
reached the Cessna around 3:20 p.m..
And the Jets,
they even set off flares in an effort
to get the pilot's attention.
They never made contact.
And the Cessna
eventually crashed
near the George Washington
National Forest in Virginia.
CNN's Brian Todd is near
the site of the crash.
He's joining us now.
Brian,
where do things
stand with this investigation now?
Well, Kate,
we've got some new information for you
this morning.
I just spoke
to a group of first responders
who were the first people on the scene
of that plane crash.
And to give you a sense
of what they were up against.
I'm going to take you to my right,
your left.
We're going to pan into that
ravine up there.
You can see how steep
the terrain is over over here.
And you can see the patchy fog
that has settled in over
that little valley
area of that ravine area there.
That is what they were up against.
That fog was here last night
when the first responders got here.
What they told us was
that they had to leave their vehicles
not too far from where I'm standing here,
just up the road a bit.
And they left their vehicles
at just before 6:00 p.m. Eastern Time.
If then took them 2 hours,
fully 2 hours
to walk into those mountains
in very steep terrain,
and they described it
as sometimes
being at an angle
like this
more severe than a 45 degree angle.
Getting to that site.
It took them more than 2 hours.
They arrived on the scene
of the plane crash.
They started just after 8:00 p.m.
Eastern Time.
And what they found
was a very grisly scene.
One of the first responders said
there were
maybe four
or five recognizable
pieces of wreckage there.
But then he said beyond that,
nothing bigger than your arm.
They did find human remains,
but again,
nothing really recognizable there.
And they believe that the plane
they said
that the plane left
a crater in the ground
They believe that
based on what they saw there,
that the plane went in
at a very steep angle
and that it took them several hours
to kind of process their way
through the scene
and then get back to their vehicles.
They did not get back to their vehicles
until about 11, 15 p.m. last night.
So the the track to get in
there was dangerous and arduous.
And when they got there,
they found really
just a lot of small, small
pieces of wreckage, Kate.
And that investigation continues.
NTSB back on site today.
Brian Todd is there. Thank you, Brian.
My team joins us now.
How can something like this happen?
You know what's
so disturbing
here, Poppy,
is why the pilot on board this plane
and why the other people on board
this plane were unresponsive
to this military fighter
jet interception.
Really alarming details here.
And the big question
now is whether or not
this private jet,
a Cessna Citation, sits
between about seven and ten people.
The air inside is pressurized,
meaning that it makes it
breathable, more compressed,
not breathable outside at high altitude.
If there was a rapid decompression
in this case, meaning that the air inside
woosh is out
because of some mechanical failure,
maybe the door was open
or there was a cracked window,
maybe something in the structural
integrity of the airplane
If you're up high at 34,000 feet,
the pilots have very little time
to respond.
10,000 feet.
They've got a lot of time to respond.
25,000 feet,
three to 5 minutes
and put on an oxygen mask. 35,000 feet.
30 to 60 seconds.
That is one.
Hypoxia starts to set in.
It's really the insidious killer.
It's very hard for pilots to recognize.
I can tell you, as a pilot
and flight instructor,
the first symptoms
your fingernails go blue,
then you start to get
a bit of visual impairment.
Also, maybe acting a little drunk,
maybe a little giddy.
And then, of course,
judgment impairment
and you could slip into unconsciousness.
It's very, very dangerous.
And this is something that the NTSB
will have to look at here.
They really have their work
cut out for them.
Now, to try and figure out
if this is, in fact, the case.
A lot of aviation
experts I'm talking to say
that is likely.
Can't rule it out just yet
because this sounds on paper
at least very similar
to the Payne Stewart crash of 1999.
You may remember that
pro golfer was on board a Lear jet
at 40,000 feet.
Fighter jets also set up to intercept
that plane.
That plane crashed in an unpopulated area
in South Dakota.
In this case,
this plane crashed in unpopulated area
in Virginia.
A lot of big questions here
that investigators will look into, Poppy.
It's really scary
and just so sad for lives lost
Appreciate the reporting.