06/09/2014 09:30
Unresponsive, private U.S. plane crashes off coast of Jamaica
A small U.S. private plane with an unresponsive pilot crashed off the east coast of Jamaica on Friday after veering far off its course toward southwest Florida and triggering a U.S. security alert that prompted a fighter jet escort, Reuters reported.
A New York county official said that Larry Glazer, a real-estate executive from Rochester in New York, and his wife, Jane Glazer, were aboard the plane. Both were killed, the official said.
It was not yet known if anyone else was on the plane.
Search and rescue teams, including a military plane and a helicopter, were dispatched to the crash site about 14 miles (22 km) north of the tourist town of Port Antonio, Jamaica's Civil Aviation Authority said.
The United States Coast Guard also joined the search with an HC-130 Hercules airplane and a helicopter, as well as a Coast Guard Cutter en route.
"At this time we have not located the aircraft or debris," a U.S. Coast Guard spokesman said late on Friday afternoon.
The pilot stopped responding to radio calls about an hour after take-off from Greater Rochester International Airport in New York and was headed to Naples Municipal Airport in Florida, a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration said.
The single-engine, seven-seater plane, a Socata TBM700, flew for several hours at an altitude of 25,000 feet (7,620 meters) southbound down the Florida east coast and south over Cuba, the FAA said.
It was trailed by two F-15 fighter jets, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) said, before the jets halted their escort when the plane entered Cuban airspace.
NORAD suggested on its Twitter page that the aircraft's pilot may have suffered "possible hypoxia," a rare condition caused by a loss of cabin pressure that may have left everyone on board unconscious.