Early Analysis: Citation Pilot Unresponsive During Intercept over Nation’s Capital

let's take an early look at the citation 5 jet crash this is the jet that flew over Washington DC and some f-16s were scrambled to intercept it it later crashed in Virginia and four people aboard were killed a single pilot and three people in the back it's a curious profile on the aircraft we know that it took off out of Elizabethton and it climbed up to flight level 340 where it leveled off it cruised at flight level 340 for the rest of the flight until it started a descent into its crash the jet headed up to Long Island MacArthur Airport which was its destination but upon reaching that it stayed at flight level 340 and then made an almost 180 degree turn to the left and headed back to its origin Elizabethton so what caused the crash let's take a look at the pilot he was a 69 year old pilot a retired Southwest Airlines pilot he flew in a class one medical and he was ATP rated the highest rating that Pilots can get in their career he had just recently passed his class one in October of 2022 the equipment the citation five is a reliable jet the citation jet class has an exceptional safety record and the citation 5 is also a safe aircraft it was this one was manufactured in 1990 and then finally if we look at the conditions they don't seem like they will be a factor in this accident either the weather or the winds or the temperature do not seem likely to be a factor so what happened first of all the route of flight why did the route of flight go up to MacArthur and then turn around and come back to the destination all at flight level 340. it seems like this is likely some kind of default mode in the autopilot so let's track the pilot off we can hear from Transmissions from Air Traffic Control that air traffic control is talking to the pilot after his departure out of Elizabethton he calls Center to pick up his clearance he's cleared as filed and then we can see that he's got a couple intermediate altitudes one of which is he levels off at 340 even though he filed at 390. so that tells us he'd likely programmed that inside his autopilot from a clearance that he got somewhere along the line we lose track of the communications and we really don't hear anything more until we're hearing the communications on guard and The Intercept Communications that come later so this tells us that it seems like the pilot was certainly conscious up until the part of the climb where he entered 3-4-0 into his final altitude even though he filed for 390. he'll cruise at that altitude for a substantial amount of time and then there's no attempt to descend for the approach into Long Island MacArthur Airport the aircraft stays at 340 and turns around and heads back to Elizabethton that seems to indicate the pilot is unconscious we know the pilot is unconscious at some point because the intercepting Pilots report visually seeing the pilot inside the citation 5 and slumped over to the right we don't know about the passengers in the back and what their status is so what may have caused this accident it looks like there are two likely factors that that are suspicious here the first is hypoxia hypoxia happens when you don't have enough oxygen and enough oxygen to feed the brain and what will eventually happen is if your oxygen deficient you will fall into a state of unconsciousness certainly the pilot was unresponsive at some point and so hypoxia is suspicious and specifically Insidious hypoxia so these aircraft have pressurization systems that maintain a pressurization inside the aircraft at about eight to nine thousand feet no matter how high the aircraft goes so in this case it could go up to its ceiling into the 40s 40 000 feet ish or higher and it would maintain a cabin altitude of eight to nine thousand feet if it's working correctly if it's not working correctly that cabin altitude will just creep up and maintain something similar to the outside altitude of the airplane if that happens on climb out and the pilot doesn't catch it the Insidious nature of that can be that you begin getting hypoxic symptoms hypoxia symptoms and you don't catch it and if you don't if you don't see the systems inside your airplane or you don't pick up on your hypoxia you could fall into a state of unconsciousness that seems a possibility here in the cases where we've seen this happen where it starts with a problem on the ground it will happen about 20 minutes into the flight and that seems to be where the FAA says according to Media reports they lost Communications with the pilot so there are certainly some clues that seem to indicate an Insidious hypoxic event happened which could have been caused by a pressurization problem on the aircraft the second type of depressurization event the ones that are more dramatic that you see in Hollywood movies are the rapid decompression those are also rare but quite frankly all of these scenarios are rare under a rapid decompression of pilot in at flight level 350 in that range will have somewhere between 30 to 60 seconds to put on their mask before they lose Consciousness it's a concept called time of useful Consciousness so under that scenario your time of useful Consciousness is 30 to 60 seconds the pilot would need to reach over grab the mask and Don it quickly now that's something Pilots go through they're trained to do that it comes as part of the type rating for these kinds of aircraft so that would have been very familiar to this pile but especially given his background and his experience so that's the second potential for a hypoxic scenario and then another possibility of this accident could be pilot a medical issue of some type so perhaps sometime on climb out the pilot became unconscious due to some kind of medical issue now this seems unlikely given just in October he passed a class one medical which is the highest rating of medical that Pilots can get but again it's a it's a possibility hopefully the NTSB can sort out what seemed to be the cause of this accident we think that the unconsciousness happened on a climate just because of the profile that the aircraft flies up to the autopilot would have flown it up to the 340 altitude and flown it from there until the crash we can see the crash as it starts the aircraft is obviously on autopilot and it begins a right-hand turn which goes into an aggressive spiral if the aircraft ran out of fuel and the right engine flamed out first in the aircrafts on autopilot that would have caused that turn and then eventually the autopilot would have kicked off and and caused the careening into the forest floor so that seems a potential way that eventually the aircraft crashes it seems like fuel fuel starvation it ran out of fuel at some point finally the question on the intercept and why the intercept was launched to uh to find this pilot when the aircraft went up to MacArthur and did the turn back southbound almost 180 degree turn that put it almost on a direct line to the White House that would have certainly got the attention of the NORAD and the other National authorities and that's about the time where they launched the interceptors to go find the aircraft so what can we learn from general aviation pilots from this mishap regardless of what the NTSB finds the first is to make sure we understand our cabin pressurization systems how they operate and what the indicators are of whether or not they're operating correctly and then to make sure we reinforce on our procedures that we're checking the proper schedule both on start on takeoff on climb out and at Cruise if we wait until Cruz to check in the cabin pressurization it could be too late the second is to make sure that we know our hypoxic symptoms our symptoms for hypoxia they can differ for each person if you've not had the opportunity to go through an altitude chamber I strongly recommend you do that so that you can get the sense of hypoxia and pick up the symptoms for yourself and then if you ever see those symptoms to know immediately your first response is to put on the oxygen and then figure out whether or not the symptoms are there or valid and then finally to remind ourselves of the rules on where an oxygen masks if you're single pilot above flight level 350 you're required to wear an oxygen mask if you have more than one pilot then above flight level 410 you wear the oxygen mask or at least one pilot has to be on the oxygen mask if they're the quick donning type which most masks are these days in this case it wouldn't have Factor the pilot was looks like he was unconscious before he got to that altitude but it's just a reminder to make sure we're recognizing the importance of wearing the mass when it's required we'll keep you posted as we learn more of this tragedy thanks for supporting aopa and thanks for watching

Channel: Air Safety Institute

Views: 152,260

Keywords: institute, aopa, aviation, pilot, fly, flying, flight, plane, airplane, airport, air, safety, asi, air safety, training, aircraft, owners, pilots

Id: SFZlNCMARVc

Length: 10min 8sec (608 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 06 2023