More now on the breaking
news in the Washington, D.C.
region.
F-16 fighter jets
scrambled shortly
before a small plane crashed in Virginia.
The aircraft created a sonic boom
that a large number of people hurt.
Here's a look from one person's
security camera.
And CNN aviation
correspondent Pete Montaigne
joins us now.
Pete, you have new information on this.
What can you tell us?
We're just getting a statement now, Jim,
from Norwood,
and I want to read it to you.
This is from CNN's Hayley Brzezinski
from Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida.
NORAD's says F-16 fighter
aircraft
responded to an unresponsive
Cessna Citation jet
that is a very large business jet
sits between seven and 11 people.
This happened earlier today
in northern Virginia,
nor at aircraft,
this statement
says, were authorized to travel
at supersonic speeds,
which would explain the sonic boom
that was heard
far and wide from Annapolis, Maryland,
to Leesburg,
Virginia, all the way down to Manassas
and Quantico.
Nor Ed says in this statement
during this event,
the nor had aircraft also use flares,
which may have been visible to the public
in an attempt to draw attention
to the pilot.
Flares were deployed
with the highest regard for safety
of the intercepted aircraft
and people on the ground.
The plane was intercepted
around three 20 Eastern Time.
Today
and the pilot was unresponsive
subsequently
subsequently crashed near the George
Washington National Forest in Virginia.
I'm also hearing from a source familiar
with this investigation
that four people
were on board
this airplane pilot unresponsive.
That plane overshot
its initial destination in New York
by about 315 miles.
You can see the track there on flight
tracking site FlightAware.
The plane took off from Tennessee
and then went northeast
bound over
northern Virginia, over the eastern shore
of Maryland, Delaware,
southern New Jersey,
and then turned inbound
for a Long Island there,
then proceeded to fly southwest bound
and through the layer and layer and layer
of restricted airspace
around Washington, D.C.,
it's known as the flight restricted zone
and the special flight rules area.
That apparently is
what triggered this intercept.
To me right now,
I can tell you as a pilot
and a flight instructor, of the
sounds like
the Payne Stewart incident,
you may remember back in the nineties
when the pro golfer was on board
his Learjet
and that airplane had a sudden loss
of cabin pressurized ocean.
The crew, as well
as the passengers on board passed out
because of the high altitude,
the high altitude
air outside, not breathable inside.
Therefore, fighter jets
were scrambled in a similar incident
to try and intercept that airplane.
Ultimately, that plane crashed.
So we know,
at least from the Virginia State Police,
that they are still searching
for the wreckage here
in a very rural area of Virginia.
But the latest information from North Add
is that the pilot was unresponsive
and that fighter jets were scrambled
and they were okayed to go supersonic.
So all of the things are lining up here.
It was not just a sonic boom
that we heard,
not just a military pilot
who eked through the sound barrier
by accident.
This was something that was intentional.
And they were trying to
get to this airplane
with the pilot who was not responding.
So it does not seem at least right now
that this was something
that was intentional, not like something
it was a terroristic act.
This is something that
where the pilot was not responding
and they had to send fighter jets
to rule out some possibilities here, Jim.
Yeah. Yeah.
And if we can
I don't know if we can show that graphic
one more time for our viewers,
because I think that was very helpful
earlier in this hour,
we were talking about
whether or not
the plane just took off
from northeast tip of Tennessee
and then crashed
in the mountains of Virginia.
That is that that can
underline why it was so alarming
for military officials, U.S.
Air Force officials,
for that plane
to go all the way up to Long Island
and then turn around and come back down.
That's very strange.
That's very unusual to see something like
that happen.
What do you think?
And that is something
that still needs to be explained here.
But if there was a rapid loss
of cabin pressurization in this airplane
and the pilots and passengers
passed out because of the
thin air outside,
they were up
relatively high,
as initially saw between
30 and 40,000 feet.
You can't maintain consciousness
for very long.
You have to put oxygen
masks on very, very quickly
so you can see the path there initially.
So the bottom right corner of your screen
to the sorry bottom
left corner of your screen,
to the top right
corner of your screen,
that was the initial path.
And you can see that
the plane went around.
What would be the DC area there
and then
flew over Long Island, Islip
there and turned back to the southwest.
So it's possible
the airplane was on automatic pilot
that it may have just sort of
continued flying on a heading
after it reached the destination.
You can see the green track there
after it looks around on Long Island.
There goes
right over the District of Columbia,
right over Washington, D.C.
So you can tell that
this was very clearly cause for alarm.