American Authorities still don’t know when the pilot of a private jet that crashed in Virginia stopped returning calls to the control room on Sunday and why he was flying in the federal capital’s severely restricted airspace, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said today. .

The Pentagon picked up two F-16 fighter jets that broke the sound barrier over Washington while chasing a Cessna Citation 560 that crashed in southwest Virginia.

“This will certainly be part of our investigation, we will look at exactly when the pilot stopped responding and why the plane was flying on this course. We don’t know yet,” NTSB investigator Adam Gerhart told reporters at the crash site.

“Everything’s on the Table”

The wreckage of the Cessna is scattered across mountainous, wooded terrain and the search will be “difficult,” he added. The NTSB will remove them and transport them to a safe location in Delaware, most likely by helicopter.

“Basically, everything is on the table. Aircraft, its engines, weather, pilot skills, maintenance reports. All the issues that we are considering,” he stressed.

A US official said the F-16s did not cause the crash of the Cessna.

In addition to the pilot, there were three other people on board the small plane. The Cessna was owned by Florida-based Melbourne-based Encore Motors and owner John Rumble told The Washington Post that his daughter, granddaughter and nanny were killed.

The US military tried to contact the pilot, but he did not answer. Apparently, the Cessna was flying on autopilot.

The plane took off from Elizabethton Municipal Airport in Tennessee and headed for MacArthur Airport on Long Island, New York, about 50 miles east of Manhattan.

^{Source: APE-MEB, Reuters}