FAA: NY-Florida Plane With Unresponsive Pilot Crashes Off Jamaica
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) -- A private U.S. plane that took off in upstate New York crashed into the ocean off the coast of Jamaica Friday after a journey of some 1,700 miles, the Federal Aviation Administration confirmed.
Maj. Basil Jarrett of the Jamaican Defense Force said the Socata TBM700 went down about 14 miles (22 kilometers) northeast of Port Antonio and the military sent aircraft to investigate. There was no immediate information about the people on board.
Jarrett added early Friday evening that an oil slick has been spotted but there is no sign yet of any wreckage. He said search and rescue teams continued to scour the waters for possible survivors.
As CBS 2's Dick Brennan reported, the plane – a Socata TBM 700 six-seater, had departed from Greater Rochester International Airport upstate. Prominent developer Larry Glazer and his wife, Jane, were onboard, according to Glazer's son.
The plane was bound for Naples Municipal Airport in Florida, but something happened that apparently incapacitated the passengers on-board.
As CBS 2's Lou Young reported, the last communication from the doomed plane came about 10 a.m. – an hour and 15 minutes into the flight.
"We're going to need to descend. We have an indication that's not correct in the plane," the pilot can be heard saying.
He was cleared to a lower altitude, but was never heard from again.
The plane flew a ghostly journey all the way down the East Coast as the pilot was unresponsive.
Two F-15 fighter jets were launched at 11:30 a.m. Friday after the pilot, who was not identified, failed to respond to repeated contact attempts by air traffic controllers for 90 minutes, said Preston Schlachter, a spokesman for the North American Aerospace Defense Command & U.S. Northern Command.
The fighters initially saw the pilot slumped over, but then the cockpit windows frosted over -- a sign of cabin decompression and hypoxia, CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reported.
It appeared that Glazer was slumped over, but still alive at the time.
"I could see his chest rising and falling," a fighter pilot said in radio transmissions. "It may be a deal of, depending on how fast they descend, he may regain consciousness."
The jets followed the plane until it reached Cuban airspace, when they peeled off, said Schlachter. The State Department then got involved.
"We have been in touch with the two countries over whose; in whose flight space it went through -- the Bahamas and Cuba," said Deputy State Department Spokeswoman Marie Harf.
FlightAware, an aviation tracking website, showed the plane over the Caribbean south of Cuba at about 2 p.m.
The plane eventually crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Jamaica.
FlightAware identified the plane's tail number as N900KN. FAA records show the plane is owned by a company based at the same address as a real estate firm in Rochester. The firm, Buckingham Properties, is owned by Glazer, who also is president of the TBM Owners and Pilots Association. Glazer co-founded the firm a year after earning his Master's degree from Columbia University in 1969.
Larry and Jane Glazer were both accomplished pilots, and loved flying and travel. Jane Glazer talked about it during an interview last year.
"We've been to Europe and Alaska. It's just, you know, a fun thing that we share," she said.
"We hope that everyone will have their thoughts and prayers with the Glazers at this difficult time, and people will be able to respect their privacy," said Mitchell Nusbaum, an attorney for Glazer.
As of Friday evening, it was not clear what caused the pilot apparently to lose consciousness.
"It may have had a loss of pressurization, 25,000 feet, single engine aircraft – that's pretty tough," said the flight director at Naples Airport.
It was also unclear Friday evening how many passengers were on board.
The incident marks the second time in less than a week that a private pilot has become unresponsive during a flight. On Saturday, a pilot lost consciousness and his plane drifted into restricted airspace over the nation's capital. Fighter jets were also launched in that case and stayed with the small aircraft until it ran out of fuel and crashed Saturday into the Atlantic.
The tragedy was also reminiscent of the 1999 Lear Jet crash that killed champion golfer Payne Stewart and five others. In-flight cabin decompression was the cause.
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