The fighter jet pilots who caught up with the business jet said its pilot appeared to be slumped over and unresponsive, according to two US officials briefed on the matter.
FILE - A crew of workers supervised by the National Transportation Safety Board place flags among the wreckage of a private jet transporting Payne Stewart in a farm field near Mina, S.D., Oct. 26, 1999. Some aviation experts are citing pilot hypoxia as a leading theory for why an unresponsive business plane flew over the nationâs capital on Sunday, June 4, 2023, and caused the military to scramble fighter jets.
It went up to 34,000 feet and basically stayed there — all the way up, all the way back,” Waldock added. “The turn is a little perplexing. But it kind of depends on what kind of autopilot system the aircraft had.” Oxygen pressure decreases as altitude increases. It’s the reason planes are pressurized and why mountaineers carry supplemental oxygen on high-altitude climbs. It’s also the reason flight attendants explain to passengers how to use oxygen masks in the unlikely event that cabin pressure is lost during a commercial flight.It's something that happens slowly. It’s almost like you’re getting groggy, and you just can’t, you can’t piece things together.
The officials were not authorized to discuss details of the military operation and spoke on condition of anonymity. Brickhouse said it's unclear why the plane suddenly turned around in New York and headed south again. He said it's possible the pilot was disoriented and may have “tried to reprogram a flight computer or something like that.”Flight tracking sites showed the plane suffered a rapid spiraling descent, dropping at one point at a rate of more than 30,000 feet per minute before crashing in the St. Mary’s Wilderness.
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