U.S. News - Private plane with 'incapacitated' pilot plummets into Gulf of Mexico

From Associated Press:

A small plane went down in the Gulf of Mexico Thursday about three hours after two F-15 fighter jets tried to make contact with the unresponsive pilot, authorities said.

Two jets caught up with the Cessna 421C at 8:45 EDT and were flying with it and monitoring it, but hadn't been able to hail the pilot, said North American Aerospace Defense Command spokesman John Cornelio.

The two F-15s from the New Orleans National Guard were already on a mission over the Gulf, Coast Guard Chief John Edwards said in a news release. The Jacksonville Air Traffic Control Center asked the military if jets could check on the plane that was orbiting near one of Eglin Air Force Base's warning areas over the Gulf, Edwards said. Eglin is located on Florida's Panhandle.

The jets' pilots reported that the Cessna's windshield was iced over and that the plane was fluctuating between 25,000 and 35,000 feet.

The Cessna went down at about 12:10 p.m., some 120 miles west of Tampa, Fla., said Petty Officer Elizabeth Boderland with the Coast Guard in New Orleans.

The plane landed softly in the water and was intact, floating right side up, Boderland said. A Coast Guard helicopter was responding and a patrol boat was about 90 miles away. Boderland did not know the condition of the pilot.

"The situation is pretty dynamic right now," Boderland said.

Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen said the plane was flying from Slidell, La., to Sarasota, Fla. She says one person was on board and that the FAA had been tracking the plane since it lost contact with the pilot at 9 a.m.

Federal Aviation Administration records show that the Cessna was registered to Lee H. Aviation in Wilmington, Del. The address listed on the FAA registry corresponds with that of Delaware Registry Ltd., a company that provides corporate services and registers both airplanes and yachts. A woman who answered the phone at Delaware Registry said the company does not give out information about its clients.

 

but I have to pick on the editor. Title reads plane "Plummets", then in the article it states the "plane landed softly in the water and was intact".

 

I did not write those articles, but only copied the title MSNBC used at 10:36 PDT. I see that it has removed the word "plummet" and is using "sink" now. The link is to MSNBC and the article is a copy paste from Associated Press.

Either way, I'm sorry to hear of the accident and the apparent loss of life. As I have been saying on the forums since 2006, every death diminishes us all.

 

Yeah but no one would read an article with he headline, "Planes lands softly"

It's like the local news casts. They start with promos in the afternoon like "are your children in danger? News at 11."

 

Not picking on you Staple, but the MSNBC editor's ploy to get you to click the link.

 

Yeah, it seems that editors just plain suck at their jobs anymore.

Also from the article it seems that the city of New Orleans has it own national guard units that include air assets. Or it could be these guys! The LAANG! I know using a search engine is a monumental task but somebody at the AP should be able to figure it out. And the times from when the FAA started to become concerned about the flight and when the military intercepted are out of sequence.

 

FlightAware: FlightAware > N48DL > 19-Apr-2012 > KASD-KSRQ

Sad.

 

Jesus. Those corkscrews are insane

 

+1. Almost always the editor that writes the short title is *not* the author of the article. It is kind of sad, the "click bait" that gets out there just to get eyeballs.

On the horizontal tracking he oscillates between 20k and 30k feet. If indeed it was a Payne Stewart-type decompression might have woken up had that descent starting 8:35 continued down to 15k or so.

Sad, R.I.P. to this doctor and pilot, looks like he was approaching retirement and wanted to take up flying again (per some of the news reports.)

 

So it appears to be an ECS (enviromental control system) malfunction and the circles are from the deceased man slouching on the right side of the control yoke after losing consciousness. At least we know he died a painless death.