On June 4, 2023, a privately operated Cessna 560 Citation V carrying three passengers and a pilot crashed at approximately 3:23p.m.

Eastern Daylight Time The Eastern Time Zone (ET) is a time zone encompassing part or all of 23 states in the eastern part of the United States, parts of eastern Canada, and the state of Quintana Roo in Mexico. * Eastern Standard Time (EST) is five hours behin ...

(EDT) in the

George Washington National Forest The George Washington and Jefferson National Forests is an administrative entity combining two U.S. United States National Forest, National Forests into one of the largest areas of public land in the Eastern United States. The forests cover o ...

, Virginia, United States, killing the occupants, after the crew had been found unresponsive.Page 2: "According to a North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) statement, about 1520 the airplane was intercepted by fighter aircraft." The plane had previously entered the

no-fly zone A no-fly zone, also known as a no-flight zone (NFZ), or air exclusion zone (AEZ), is a territory or area established by a military power over which certain aircraft are not permitted to fly. Such zones are usually set up in an enemy power's terri ...

over

Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...

, and was intercepted by F-16 fighter jets before it crashed. The final report by the

National Transportation Safety Board The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is an independent U.S. government investigative agency responsible for civil transportation accident investigation. In this role, the NTSB investigates and reports on aviation accidents and inci ...

(NTSB), released on May 13, 2025, concluded the crew and passengers lost consciousness due to a depressurization of undetermined origin.

Accident

The plane involved in the accident was a Cessna 560 Citation V, registered N611VG to Encore Motors of Melbourne, a Florida-based company under the ownership of John and Barbara Rumpel. It departed from Elizabethton Municipal Airport in

Elizabethton Elizabethton () is a city in, and the county seat of Carter County, Tennessee, United States. Elizabethton is the historical site of the first independent American government (known as the Watauga Association, created in 1772) located west of bo ...

Tennessee Tennessee (, ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders Kentucky to the north, Virginia to the northeast, North Carolina t ...

, at approximately 1:15p.m. EDT, bound for

Long Island MacArthur Airport Long Island MacArthur Airport , formerly known as Islip Airport, is a public airport in Ronkonkoma, New York, within the Town of Islip in Suffolk County, on Long Island. Covering , the airport was established in 1942, activated in 1943, and b ...

(ICAO: KISP) in New York. According to an NTSB spokesman, fifteen minutes after

takeoff Takeoff is the phase of flight in which an aerospace vehicle leaves the ground and becomes airborne. For aircraft traveling vertically, this is known as liftoff. For aircraft that take off horizontally, this usually involves starting with a tr ...

air traffic control Air traffic control (ATC) is a service provided by ground-based air traffic controllers who direct aircraft on the ground and through a given section of controlled airspace, and can provide advisory services to aircraft in non-controlled air ...

instructed the pilot to maintain altitude at , but he did not respond. The plane continued

climbing Climbing is the activity of using one's hands, feet, or other parts of the body to ascend a steep topographical object that can range from the world's tallest mountains (e.g. the eight thousanders) to small boulders. Climbing is done for locom ...

until reaching a

cruising altitude Altitude is a distance measurement, usually in the vertical or "up" direction, between a reference datum and a point or object. The exact definition and reference datum varies according to the context (e.g., aviation, geometry, geographical s ...

of and proceeded to fly on the correct bearing to land at MacArthur Airport. After reaching

Long Island Long Island is a densely populated continental island in southeastern New York (state), New York state, extending into the Atlantic Ocean. It constitutes a significant share of the New York metropolitan area in both population and land are ...

, the plane followed the correct flight path to line up for the runway, but failed to initiate its

descent Descent may refer to: As a noun Genealogy and inheritance * Common descent, concept in evolutionary biology * Kinship, one of the major concepts of cultural anthropology **Pedigree chart or family tree **Ancestry **Lineal descendant **Heritage ** ...

on approach, maintaining its altitude and continuing past the airport on the same heading as the runway alignment. The flight continued on until it entered the restricted airspace over Washington, D.C. The U.S. Capitol complex was placed on "elevated alert" when the plane flew over the restricted airspace as reported by the

U.S. Capitol Police The United States Capitol Police (USCP) is a federal law enforcement agency in the United States with nationwide jurisdiction charged with protecting the United States Congress within the District of Columbia and throughout the United States an ...

NORAD North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD ; , CDAAN), known until March 1981 as the North American Air Defense Command, is a combined organization of the United States and Canada that provides aerospace warning, air sovereignty, and pr ...

deployed six F-16 fighter jets to intercept the plane.

Interception and crash

The Cessna was intercepted at approximately 3:20p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. Two F-16 jets from the

113th Wing The 113th Wing, known as the "Capital Guardians", is a unit of the District of Columbia Air National Guard, stationed at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland. If activated to federal service, the fighter portion of the Wing is gained by the United Stat ...

Joint Base Andrews Joint Base Andrews (JBA) is a United States military facility located in Prince George's County, Maryland. The facility is under the jurisdiction of the United States Air Force (USAF) 316th Wing, Air Force District of Washington (AFDW). The bas ...

which engaged in supersonic flight over the capital region were the first to reach the Cessna, and attempted to contact the pilot. They used

flare A flare, also sometimes called a fusée, fusee, or bengala, bengalo in several European countries, is a type of pyrotechnic that produces a bright light or intense heat without an explosion. Flares are used for distress signaling, illuminatio ...

s to draw the Cessna pilot's attention, although the plane's pilot was unresponsive. The flight continued on, flying past Washington, D.C., and entering the state of

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States between the East Coast of the United States ...

, until crashing at approximately 3:30p.m. EDT. Tracking data from

FlightAware FlightAware is an American multi-national technology company that provides real-time, historical, and predictive flight tracking data and products. it is the world's largest flight tracking platform, with a network of over 32,000 ADS-B gro ...

indicated that the plane flew over Washington, D.C., at an

altitude Altitude is a distance measurement, usually in the vertical or "up" direction, between a reference datum (geodesy), datum and a point or object. The exact definition and reference datum varies according to the context (e.g., aviation, geometr ...

of . The plane crashed near

Montebello, Virginia Montebello is an unincorporated community in Nelson County, Virginia, United States. It was among the communities severely affected by flash flooding from Hurricane Camille in 1969.Garnett P. Williams and Harold P. Guy. Erosional and Deposition ...

, on the north face of Mine Bank Mountain at an elevation of , in the vicinity of the Mine Bank Creek Trail in the

. Vegetation damage and crater at the site of the crash indicated fast, near-vertical descent.

Passengers and crew

The FAA confirmed four people died as a result of the crash. John Rumpel's daughter, granddaughter, her nanny, as well as the pilot were on board the plane during the crash. By June 10, the names of three individuals onboard were known: pilot Jeff Hefner, and passengers Adina Azarian, Rumpel's daughter, and Aria Azarian, her daughter. In an interview, John Rumpel, who was not aboard at the time of the accident, said that the Cessna "descended at 20,000 feet a minute".

Aftermath and investigation

First responders who were notified of the crash at 3:50p.m. EDT reported that no survivors were found in the wreckage.

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reported that the plane left a "

crater A crater is a landform consisting of a hole or depression (geology), depression on a planetary surface, usually caused either by an object hitting the surface, or by geological activity on the planet. A crater has classically been described ...

", leading responders to believe that it impacted the ground at a very steep angle. A preliminary report was released by the

on June 21, 2023.

Cause

The owner of the aircraft has speculated that the crash may have been caused by hypoxia resulting from the loss of cabin pressure, rendering the passengers and the pilot unconscious. U.S. officials said that the intercept pilots had seen the Cessna's pilot "passed out" at the controls. The NTSB's preliminary report says that the

cockpit voice recorder A flight recorder is an electronic recording device placed in an aircraft for the purpose of facilitating the investigation of aviation accidents and incidents. The device may often be referred to colloquially as a "black box", an outdated nam ...

(CVR) has not been located.Page 3: "According to recent maintenance inspection records, the airplane as of May 2023 was equipped with a cockpit voice recorder (CVR), however, at the time of this publication, a CVR had not been located. The airplane was not equipped with a flight data recorder, nor was it required to be." The jet was intercepted by fighter aircraft at about 3:20p.m. EDT. Two minutes later it went into a right spiral into the terrain. The final report from the NTSB was released on May 14, 2025. In the report, the investigators concluded that the most likely cause of the accident was hypoxia caused by a lack of cabin pressurization, though they noted that this could not be corroborated by medical

forensics Forensic science combines principles of law and science to investigate criminal activity. Through crime scene investigations and laboratory analysis, forensic scientists are able to link suspects to evidence. An example is determining the time and ...

of the deceased. The report cited incomplete maintenance as a contributing factor in the crash, as the owner of the plane had recently declined to fix a number of issues, including several that would prevent the

emergency oxygen system Aircraft emergency oxygen systems or air masks are emergency equipment fitted to pressurized commercial aircraft, intended for use when the cabin pressurisation system has failed and the cabin altitude has climbed above a safe level. It consists ...

from deploying in the event of a low- or no-oxygen scenario, as the plane's occupants would have experienced at that altitude without pressurization. The NTSB was unable to determine what could have caused the aircraft to depressurize. The CVR had also ultimately not been found.

Notes

References

External links

Flight path of the plane from Flightaware
{{DEFAULTSORT:Virginia plane crash, 2023

Plane crash An aviation accident is an event during aircraft operation that results serious injury, death, or significant destruction. An aviation incident is any operating event that compromises safety but does not escalate into an aviation accident. Pre ...

2023 in Washington, D.C. June 2023 in the United States Aviation accidents and incidents in the United States in 2023 Aviation accidents and incidents in Virginia Accidents and incidents involving the Cessna Citation family 2023 plane crash Airliner accidents and incidents caused by pilot incapacitation Airliner accidents and incidents caused by fuel exhaustion