Plane with unresponsive pilot crashes off Jamaica

World Today

Plane with unresponsive pilot crashes off Jamaica

A private U.S. plane with an unresponsive pilot crashed into the ocean north of the Caribbean island Friday after a journey of more than 1,400 miles. Maj. Basil Jarrett of the Jamaican Defense Force said the plane went down about 14 miles (22 kilometers) northeast of Port Antonio and the military sent aircraft to investigate and the military sent aircraft to investigate.

“We can confirm that the plane has gone down,” he said. There was no immediate information about the people on board.

The plane took off at 8:45 a.m. EDT from the Greater Rochester International Airport in New York, according to local officials. Air traffic controllers were last able to contact the pilot of the Socata TBM700, a high performance single-engine turboprop, at 10 a.m. EDT, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement.

The pilot, who was not identified, had filed a flight plan with the FAA to fly from Rochester to Naples, Florida. Fighter jets were scrambled at 11:30 a.m. EDT and followed the plane until it reached Cuban airspace, when they peeled off, said Preston Schlachter, a spokesman for the North American Aerospace Defense Command & US Northern Command. FlightAware, an aviation tracking website, showed the plane over the Caribbean south of Cuba at about 2 p.m. EDT.

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 developer Larry Glazer, who also is president of the TBM Owners and Pilots Association. This is the third such incident involving U.S. plane in the last two weeks. A plane had crashed on approach to Freeport on the island of Grand Bahama in which four men who died. The plane had flown from Ormond Beach Municipal Airport near Daytona Beach.

This report has been compiled with inputs from The Associated Press.