Breaking news now. A private plane flying from Rochester NY, to Naples, FL has stopped responding to radio calls, and is flying off to nowhere. It’s currently over Cuban airspace. Looks like another cabin depressurization incident.
Tracking the plane on Flightradar24. It is just north of Eastern tip of Jamaica now.
Latest tweet from FlightRadar24: "#N900KN is gone just north of Jamaica. Last signal was picked up at 25000 feet. We have to wait for more information. "
Yep, that is what I saw on the screen. It just disappeared.
Do they make those things with frosted windows, or were they frosted perhaps as a result of depressurization?
If the aircraft lost cabin pressure, it probably lost the heating system also. It wouldn’t take long for the interior of the aircraft to get well below 0 degrees. That would probably frost up the windows.
The latter. The sudden drop in pressure causes the cabin air to lose its ability to hold humidity, and dew condenses onto everything. Since the compressed air is also the cabin heat source, the cabin rapidly cools down to something approaching ambient air temp, which can be -40 or colder, so the dew rapidly freezes into frost.
Poor bastard …
The plane has now crashed on Jamaica.
Reports are now saying off the coast of Jamaica.
Here’s the audio from Atlanta Center. At about 4:10, the pilot of the TBM 900KN checks in and requests a decent to FL180. Says something like “We have an indication that’s not correct on the plane.”
ATC clears him down to FL250 and 900KN responds and again says they need to get lower. ATC says he has traffic at FL240 to clear first.
At 5:00 ATC gives 30 degrees left and trying to get you down. 900KN responds
At about 6:40 cleared to FL200, pilot responded.
At 7:13 given direct to Taylor(?), takes two calls to get him this time.
At 8:08 another call.
At 8:36 ATC clears him to FL200 and direct Taylor. The response from 900KN sounds like “0N 900KN”. This is the last response from the aircraft.
At 9:52 center calls again and begins to realize something is wrong. There are additional calls after that as center realizes the aircraft is not responding and they attempt to establish contact.
It sounds like the pilot knew there was a problem and he needed to get down, but maybe not the severity of it. Rather than requesting an emergency descent to 12000 or lower (where you can breathe without supplemental oxygen), he accepted intermediate stops and only wanted to get down to FL180.
Is it likely the hypoxia had already set in by the time he requested the descent and his thinking was already muddled at that point?
For those of us who aren’t pilots, what does “FLxxx” mean?
Guessing from the context (I am not a pilot).
Elevation. FL250 equals 25000 ft.
Flight Level - it’s the pressure altitude in 100’s of feet, or the real altitude adjusted up or down according to sea level barometric pressure. Every plane up in the flight levels has altimeters set to a standard pressure, so they may rise and fall for a given indicated altitude, but they’ll rise and fall together. The flight levels are above 18,000 feet pressure altitude in the US, the transition altitude is different other places.
FL250 means 25,000 feet pressure altitude, FL180 is 18.000 feet, etc.
txtumbleweed, Any idea of when this was this was taking place and where was the plane.
Sorry, at work and I should have cleaned the conversation up with a couple of explanations to the acronyms. Thanks to ElvisL1ves for helping out with the explanation and the link to the flight path.
If anyone interested, the registration data is here. It was a brand new airplane, looks like it was certified in April of this year.
The victims were a real estate developer from Rochester, NY and his wife.
“A small plane piloted by Rochester developer Larry Glazer and carrying his wife, Jane, flew aimlessly and unresponsive over the Atlantic Ocean for hours Friday, shadowed by fighter jets, before crashing off the coast of Jamaica.”
Jamaican authorities report a debris field has been spotted.
Winds are light, so hopefully the sea state is calm enough to help with recovery. It’s not so far out so should be several boats on scene before sundown.