The airplane eventually climbed to 34,000 feet, where it remained until it began to crash. At that time, the airplane was at 31,000 feet. Preliminary NTSB information also showed that the last air traffic control communication attempt with the Cessna was at approximately 1:28 p.m. Inexplicably, the plane turned around over New York's Long Island and flew a straight path down over D.C. while at 34,000 feet, according to preliminary information from the NTSB. The airplane overflew MacArthur Airport at 2:33 p.m. The Federal Aviation Administration said the Cessna Citation took off from Elizabethton, Tennessee, on Sunday and was headed for Long Island's MacArthur Airport. and rescuers reached the crash site by foot around four hours later. Virginia State Police said officers were notified of the potential crash shortly before 4 p.m. Police said Sunday night that rescuers had reached the crash site in a rural part of the Shenandoah Valley and that no survivors were found. "Everything is on the table until we slowly and methodically remove different components and elements that will be relevant for this safety investigation," he said.Ī preliminary report will be released in 10 days and a final report will be released in 12 to 24 months, he 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. Investigators will look at when the pilot become unresponsive and why the aircraft flew the path that it did, he said. There are, however, other pieces of avionics equipment that will have data that investigators can examine, Gerhardt said. Investigators were still searching for it as of Monday evening. The plane is not required to have a flight recorder, commonly referred to as a black box, but it is possible that it had one. In a briefing later on Monday, Gerhardt noted that the wreckage was so damaged that "it is no longer distinguishable as an aircraft." Speaking at a briefing Monday morning, NTSB investigator Adam Gerhardt said the wreckage is "highly fragmented" and investigators will examine the most delicate evidence on the scene, after which the wreckage will be moved, perhaps by helicopter, to Delaware, where it can be examined, he said. In a post on a Facebook page appearing to belong to Barbara Rumpel, she wrote, "My family is gone, my daughter and granddaughter" - changing her profile picture to one that seemed to include both. Speaking to The New York Times, John Rumpel said his daughter, 2-year-old granddaughter, her nanny and the pilot were aboard the flight. The plane was registered to a Florida-based company owned by John and Barbara Rumpel. Their identities weren't immediately released. The FAA said that the pilot and three passengers were killed and that the plane was "destroyed" in the crash. The crash, which happened after the military scrambled fighter jets to intercept the plane once it entered restricted airspace around the nation's capitol, left behind "highly fragmented" wreckage in a mountainous area that will take days to gather and sort, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. Four people are dead after an unresponsive Cessna Citation airplane flew over Washington, D.C., and crashed in Virginia on Sunday, federal authorities said.
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