AUGUSTA COUNTY, Va. (WFXR) — Federal investigators are tasked with finding the cause of the private plane crash that occurred in Virginia on June 4.
Some aviation experts assume the lack of oxygen played a role.
“When you are in a jet of any type, you’ve got cabin pressurization,” said Philip Solomon, CFO and Head of Flight School at ‘Heart of Virginia Aviation.’
Solomon is talking about the system making thin air at high altitudes breathable inside the plane.
“What can happen on rare occasions is the pressurization might fail, or somehow, it got hit by something that put a hole in the plane, it would cause a forced and fast depressurization,” said Solomon.
If something like this were to happen, he says people in a plane have about one minute to put on an oxygen mask.
Although, in private aviation, Solomon said you would have two oxygen masks. One for the pilot and one for the co-pilot, but typically there would not be some for passengers.
The question of why this plane was in restricted airways continues to remain under investigation.
Solomon explained how fighter jets got involved.
“If you do go into an area, and you haven’t communicated, then once you are in that area, it will trigger an alert,” said Solomon.
He added, worse case it’s a hostile action and they could potentially shoot the plane down, or in normal scenarios, fighter jets would use a particular protocol to direct the plane out of the restricted airway.
If the pilot is unresponsive again, they do something different.
“The military aircraft would come alongside the other plane and attempt to visually say ‘Excuse me, you need to be doing something here.’ In this particular case, from my understanding, they saw someone slumped on the controls,” said Solomon.
NTSB said they won’t have the probable cause for a year maybe two, but Solomon believes those answers could be coming sooner than that.
Solomon on restricted airways and fighter jets:
Solomon discusses the next steps for the NTSB investigation:
