Pilot seen slumped over before deadly crash

WASHINGTON — The pilot of a business jet that flew over Washington and crashed in a remote part of Virginia appeared to be slumped over and unresponsive, three US officials said Monday, recounting observations by fighter pilots who intercepted the wayward flight.

The revelations came as federal investigators trudged through rugged terrain to reach the site where the plane slammed into a mountain Sunday, killing four people. The officials who said that the fighter pilots saw the civilian pilot slumped over had been briefed on the matter and spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss details of the military operation.

The plane’s owner told news outlets that his daughter and 2-year-old granddaughter were aboard.

The New York-bound plane took an erratic flight path — inexplicably, turning around over Long Island to fly directly over the nation’s capital — which prompted the military to scramble fighter jets. This caused a sonic boom heard in Washington, Maryland and Virginia.

Remote terrain around the crash site posed major challenges to the investigation. It took investigators several hours to hike into the rural area near the community of Montebello, about 60 miles (97 km) southwest of Charlottesville, said NTSB spokesperson Eric Weiss. They expect to be on the scene for at least three to four days.

Speaking at a briefing Monday morning, NTSB investigator Adam Gerhardt said the wreckage is “highly fragmented” and investigators will examine the most delicate evidence at the site, after which the wreckage will be moved, perhaps by helicopter, to Delaware, where it can be further examined. The plane is not required to have a flight recorder but it is possible that there are other avionics equipment that will have data that they can examine, Gerhardt said.

The Virginia State Police issued a statement saying that because of the severity of the crash, human remains will be transported to the state medical examiner’s office for autopsy and identification. The Federal Aviation Administration said that the victims included the pilot and three passengers but didn’t release their names. There were no survivors.

Investigators will look at when the pilot became unresponsive and why aircraft flew the path that it did, Gerhardt said. They will consider several factors that are routinely examined in such probes including the plane, its engines, weather conditions, pilot qualifications and maintenance records, he said. A preliminary report will be released in 10 days.

According to a timetable released late Monday by NTSB spokesperson Jennifer Gabris, the plane took off from Elizabethton Municipal Airport in Tennessee at 1:13 p.m. Sunday, headed for MacArthur Airport in Long Island, NY Air Traffic Control lost communication with the airplane during its ascent.

Preliminary information indicates the last ATC communication attempt with the airplane was at approximately 1:28 p.m., when the plane was at 31,000 feet. The plane climbed to 34,000 feet, where it remained for the rest of the flight until 3:23 p.m. when it began to descend and crashed about nine minutes later. The plane was flying at 34,000 feet, when it flew over MacArthur Airport at 2:33 p.m., the NTSB said.

The White House expressed its “deepest condolences” on Monday to the family of those on board the plane.

“We need to keep them front and center,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said.

Kirby deferred questions about a follow-up report on the security response over Washington airspace to the Pentagon and US Secret Service. But he said, “What I saw was just a classic, textbook response.”

The White House was continuously informed as the military jets tried to contact the pilot of the civilian plane and monitored the small aircraft’s path from Washington airspace to rural Virginia, Kirby said.