The
National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the crash of a Cirrus SR22 into the Atlantic Ocean about 50 miles from Wallops Island, Va., on Saturday.
The plane is a single-engine Cirrus (tail number N930RH) registered to Ronald Hutchinson of Brookfeld, Wis., according to Federal Aviation Administration records.
The popular flight tracking website
Flightaware shows the aircraft departing Waukesha, Wis., headed for Manassas, Va. The website shows the flight path ends in the Atlantic Ocean.
The U.S. Coast Guard 5th District in Portsmouth
received notification at approximately 2:40 p.m. that a single-engine aircraft with only the pilot aboard failed to land at Manassas
Regional Airport as scheduled. Instead the plane remained at an
altitude of approximately 13,000 feet and continued into restricted air
space in the vicinity of Washington, D.C.
Two F-16 aircraft came alongside the Cirrus to investigate and observed the pilot to be unconscious in the cockpit.
The F-16 airmen escorted the plane on its course over the Eastern
Shore of Virginia until it eventually ran out of fuel and crashed into
the Atlantic Ocean.
The Coast Guard launched an MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter crew and an
HC-130 Hercules airplane crew from Air Station Elizabeth City in North
Carolina and the crew of Cutter Beluga, homeported in Virignia Beach, to
respond.
