A slow and unresponsive commercial airliner that flew over the nation’s capital Sunday afternoon prompted the military to intercept the fighter jet before the plane crashed in Virginia, officials said. The fighter jet caused a loud boom that was heard throughout the capital region.
Hours later, police said rescuers had arrived at the crash site in the rural Shenandoah Valley and that no survivors had been found.
The Federal Aviation Administration said the Cessna Citation took off from Elizabethtown, Tennessee, on Sunday and was headed to Long Island’s MacArthur Airport. Inexplicably, the plane overturned on New York’s Long Island and flew straight down over DC before crashing on a mountainside near Montebello, Virginia, around 3:30 p.m.
It was not immediately clear why the plane did not respond, why it was stolen or how many people were in the plane. The plane flies directly over the nation’s capital, although it technically flies above some of the most restricted airspace in the country.
A US official confirmed to The Associated Press that a military jet had scrambled to respond to the small plane, which did not respond to radio transmissions and then crashed. The official was not authorized to publicly discuss details of the military operation and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Flight tracking sites show the plane suffered a rapid descent, dropping at one point at more than 30,000 feet per second before crashing in the St. Louis desert.
The North American Aerospace Defense Command later said in a statement that the F-16 was authorized to travel at supersonic speeds, which caused a sonic boom that was heard in Washington and parts of Virginia and Maryland.
“During this event, the NORAD aircraft also used alarms – which could have been visible to the public – in an attempt to attract attention from the commander,” the statement said. “Fires are operated with the utmost regard for the safety of the aircraft involved and the people on the ground. The fires burned quickly and completely and there was no danger to people on the ground when they spread.”
Virginia State Police said officers were notified of the potential crash just before 4 p.m. and rescuers arrived at the scene on foot about four hours later. No survivors were found, police said.
The plane that crashed was registered to Encore Motors of Melbourne Inc, which is based in Florida. John Rumpel, who runs the company, told The New York Times that his daughter, 2-year-old grandson, his daughter and the pilot were on the plane. They were returning to their home in East Hampton, on Long Island, after visiting his home in North Carolina, she said.
Rumpel, the pilot, told the newspaper that he did not have much information from the authorities but hoped that his family did not suffer and suggested that the plane may have lost pressure.
“I don’t think they’ve seen the wreckage yet,” Rumpel told the newspaper. “It descends at 20,000 feet a second, and no one can survive a crash from that speed.”
A woman who identified herself as Barbara Rumpel, listed as the company’s president, said she had no comment Sunday when reached by The Associated Press.
The incident brought back memories of the 1999 crash of a Learjet that lost cabin pressure and flew erratically across the country with professional golfer Payne Stewart on board. A plane crashed in rural South Dakota and six people died.
President Joe Biden was playing golf at Joint Base Andrews around the time the fighter jet took off. Anthony Guglielmi, a spokesman for the US Secret Service, said the incident did not affect the president’s actions on Sunday. Biden was playing golf at a Maryland military base with his brother in the afternoon.
A White House official said the president had been briefed on the crash and that the sound of the scrambling aircraft was exhausted at Joint Base Andrews.
