Plane crashes near Washington; The owner of the aircraft assures that his family was on board

2023-06-05 04:04:20

The owner of the aircraft, which crashed this Sunday near Washington, DC (USA) after Armed Forces planes unsuccessfully tried to establish contact with the pilot, told various media today that his family was on board.

The Federal Aviation Administration of the USA (FAA, for its acronym in English) is investigating the causes that led to the private aircraft of the Cessna brand crashing around 3:30 p.m. local time (19:30 GMT) in a ” mountainous area” near Montebello, Virginia.

Según The New York Times, The plane was registered to the company Encore Motors of Melbourne and its owner, John Rumpel, 75, told the newspaper that his daughter, a 2-year-old granddaughter and her nanny were on board.who were returning home to East Hampton, New York after a family visit in North Carolina.

The FAA said that the plane was bound for MacArthur Airport on Long Islandthe area of ​​New York state where East Hampton is located, and which had left the city of Elizabethton, in the state of Tennessee, neighboring North Carolina, in the south of the country.

Rumpel too He told The Washington Post that he was in contact with the FAA, stated that his “entire family” was on the plane and regretted that “no one could survive” given the rate of descent before crashing.

Virginia state police told local channel WFXR on Sunday night that search efforts were underway, but there were bad weather conditions.

The plane flew over Washington and Virginia and was intercepted by F-16 fighter jets, which flew at supersonic speeds and used flares to get the pilot’s attention without responding, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) reported. .

The supersonic roar from the fighter jets drew the attention of residents of the Washington DC metropolitan area, but authorities said shortly thereafter that there was no active threat and that the noise came from a “Department of Defense authorized” flight.