My Guess is a Heart Attack
In another life, I was a pilot, one of those superhumans who has the ability to leave the ground and fly around the sky, then return to earth to fly again. One of the airplanes I flew in my flying career was the Cessna 560 Citation V. In fact, my employer at the time was one of the first to operate the zippy little jets. I flew them for two or three years then transferred to another location and flew another version of Cessna’s famous 500 series Citation, the CE 550 Citation II. Before I went into the V, I flew its predecessor, the CE 550/SII, the Citation SII. Later on in my flying career, I moved into the British-designed Hawker 700 and 800 and 800XP. For some eighteen months, I worked as a simulator/ground instructor on Hawkers at the Flight Safety Houston Center in Houston. After leaving Flight Safety, I flew contract, including Citation Vs. Consequently, I have more than a passing interest in yesterday’s mysterious crash of a Citation V in the Virginia mountains (not far from where I lived in Virginia when I was working for a charter operator in Lynchburg.)
Based on media accounts, the Citation, which was owned by a large Donald Trump and Republican donor who sits on the board of the National Rifle Association, took off from Elizabethton, Tennessee for a flight to MacArthur Airport on Long Island. The last communication with the pilot was a few minutes after takeoff when the airplane was passing through flight level 310, or 31,000 feet above measured sea level on a standard day. The airplane continued to climb and leveled off at an altitude of FL 340 and flew a route to MacArthur, then turned around and took up a course directly to Elizabethton, a town in the Smoky Mountains in northeast Tennessee near the North Carolina state line. Although I grew up in Tennessee, all I know about Elizabethton is that I had a female pen pal who lived there when I was a young teenager. According to the airplane owner, his daughter, one of the three passengers on board the ill-fated jet, had been visiting the family’s North Carolina vacation home.
According to the owner and media reports, there was only one pilot on the airplane. This is a departure from standard procedure. The Citation V was certified as a two-pilot airplane and the type certificate requires two pilots. However, it appears that the FAA has authorized an exemption to certain pilots to operate the Citation V single-pilot. Most, if not all, airplanes can be operated by a single pilot, depending on cockpit layout. This includes heavy airline-type airplanes. The addition of a second pilot to flight crews came about as a desire to increase safety by having a second pilot on board to take over the airplane in the event of pilot incapacitation. However, a second pilot increases pilot salaries. Eliminating the second pilot may save (some) money, but it also decreases safety. Just how much money it saves is questionable since insurance rates for single-pilot operations are higher.
Speculation by “aviation experts” (who probably never flew a Citation V) is that the accident was caused by hypoxia due to a loss of cabin pressure. Comparisons are being made to the crash of a Learjet carrying professional golfer Payne Stewart, but the problem in that case was that the oxygen system may have been turned off or depleted, not loss of cabin pressure per se. Some speculate that there was a rapid decompression, but the airplane was not high enough for a rapid decompression to cut the time of useful consciousness, the time a person is able to accomplish meaningful actions due to loss of oxygen. Even at 35,000 feet, a pilot would have around 30 seconds of useful consciousness, time to don their oxygen mask and start a descent. At higher altitudes, the TUC drops to mere seconds, but the Citation never got that high. According to Flight Aware, the pilot had filed for FL 390 but the airplane leveled at FL 340.
I doubt that cabin pressure was an issue because the Citation V is equipped with a red light on the annunciator panel that will illuminate to alert the pilot when cabin pressure reaches 10,000 feet. The light will trigger the master warning light, a flashing red light that will get the pilot’s attention. Cabin altitude in excess of 10,000 feet MSL will also automatically drop the cabin oxygen masks. The pilot checklist establishes strict emergency procedures for this eventuality – the pilots immediately don oxygen masks and execute an emergency descent to a lower altitude. I had a pressurization problem once on either a V or an S/II. I was PIC but was in the right seat. (The diaphragm in the outflow valve had ruptured.) I happened to look down and noticed that the cabin was climbing rapidly. I called ATC and declared emergency and advised that we were starting down. We were at flight level 270 (27,000 feet). The cabin never reached 10,000 feet and the other pilot and I never donned oxygen masks.
I suspect the problem was pilot incapacitation of another kind, of the physical variety. The pilot, one Jeff Hefner, was reported to have been a retired airline pilot who flew for Southwest Airlines for 25 years and had over 25,000 hours in the air. Although his age has not been reported, he was probably well into his sixties and possibly older. (He was actually 69. He was also an owner of a flight operation and was apparently providing pilot services to the airplane owner.) Federal regulations dictate that airline pilots must not be older than 65 years of age, a change from age 60 which stood for most of the history of the airline industry. Unfortunately, older men (and women) are in declining health and sudden death is not remote. I knew a pilot who flew a Citation single-pilot for a company here in Houston. He was single and lived alone. He failed to show up for a flight one day and when someone went to his house to check on him, they found him dead. Another pilot I knew went to sleep on his sofa and never woke up. Both of these pilots were in their fifties. Heart attacks are not the only problems facing us. One of my coworkers at Flight Safety suddenly fell out in the simulator and had a seizure, One of my friends, not a pilot, recently started having seizures. He turned out to have a brain tumor. I suspect that Hefner suffered a heart attack or some other physical ailment as the airplane was climbing and slumped forward in his shoulder harness. He had no copilot to help him, and the airplane was on its own.
Citation Vs might be “little jets” but they are surprisingly sophisticated. They are equipped with flight management systems that, when the autopilot is engaged, will fly the airplane without input from the pilot. FMSs utilize GPS and ground-based radio navigation systems to fly along a preprogrammed course from takeoff to destination. Pilot operations are only required for takeoff and landing. When I was flying Citation Vs, we routinely engaged the autopilot right after takeoff and didn’t disengage it until just prior to landing. All the pilot has to do is set the altitude in the altitude prompter on the instrument panel and the engaged autopilot will level the airplane and hold the altitude until the pilot resets the prompter. Apparently, the Citation V flew the planned route to MacArthur then, after the pilot made no input, the system picked up a direct course back to the takeoff point at Elizabethton. It probably flew to the point of fuel exhaustion then when the engines lost power, went into an out-of-control spin into the ground.
In regard to aircraft pressurization and oxygen, airplanes are pressurized by air taken from the engines. It passes through an air cycle machine and is pumped into the cabin as conditioned air. Cabin pressure is controlled by outflow valves mounted at the rear of the pressurized vessel. Diaphragms in the outflow valves are controlled by the pressure controller, which allows the valves to open enough to allow enough air to flow out to keep the cabin at the preset altitude. Oxygen is NOT pumped into the cabin. Oxygen in the cabin is relative to the cabin pressure altitude, which is set to an altitude up to 10,000 feet, the maximum altitude at which most people can function without becoming hypoxic. Normal procedure is to set the planned cruise altitude in the pressurization system then the system will maintain the maximum pressure differential for that altitude. (A recommended procedure is to set the system to 500 feet above the planned altitude to allow a cushion for bumps.) Citation Vs have an oxygen system with masks for the pilot and drop-down masks for the passengers, but it is only used to provide oxygen in the event of loss of cabin pressurization. (Some pilots breathe oxygen at night prior to landing as it sharpens the wits.) There is no on-off function of the oxygen controls, which can be set for crew only, for crew and passengers or dump masks in the event the masks don’t drop automatically. Citation Vs are equipped with quick-don oxygen masks for the pilots. All the pilot has to do to put it on is pick it up and sweep it over his/her face. Oxygen flow is then automatic.
Much has been made over the airplane “flying through restricted airspace.” It didn’t. The restricted airspace over Washington, DC only extends up to flight level 180 (18,000 feet MSL) and the Citation was well above it. The reason NORAD sent fighters aloft was because air traffic control had lost contact with the airplane, and it had taken up a course other than its flight plan route. This is a common practice. The fighters would have been sent up even if the airplane hadn’t been headed for D.C. They were launched because the airplane wasn’t flying its planned route. Authorities were alerted when it failed to land at MacArthur and turned back toward Elizabethton. It’s probable that FAA air traffic controllers thought the airplane was “no radio” after they lost contact with the pilot. Procedures for loss of communications are to continue the flight as cleared and land at the destination. It wouldn’t have been until the pilot failed to begin a descent to land at MacArthur that ATC would have realized there was a problem other than loss of communications.
My last flight was in 2010, thirteen years ago, and there are many things I’ve forgotten about the various airplane systems. I flew airplanes with Global, Sperry and Honeywell flight management systems. It seems to me that the three systems were programmed to return to point of origin in the event of an unexpected action, such as failing to land. In this instance, the airplane not only didn’t land, it never left FL 340. Considering that the track was on a beeline for Elizabethton, it’s pretty obvious that the FMS was locked on to it. The route to MacArthur was apparently along a Jetway and a published arrival east of the DC area but after it made the turn, it was headed direct to Elizabethton.
The main thing I get out of this is to question the wisdom of granting single-pilot exemptions for jets. The original exemptions were for light jets, meaning jets weighing less than 12,500 pounds. Except for jets, airplanes weighing less than 12,500 pounds do not require pilots to be type-rated and do not require a second pilot. The Citation V grosses out at 16,500 pounds. When the V was certified, the medium category was 12,500-300,000 pounds, it has since been changed to 16,500-300,000 pounds. Jet airplanes are fast and things happen quickly. Even though an airplane is classified as light, many are quite sophisticated, as much as any airline-type transport. In order to be type-rated for an airplane, all the pilot has to do is pass an evaluation which mainly involves flying instrument approaches and maintaining specified parameters while doing certain manuevers. One approach has to be flown with an engine out. Passing the flight check only means the pilot is competent, not that they are exceptional in any way. Obtaining a single-pilot exemption involves passing the same flight check without a copilot. I was a simulator evaluator, all that was required for the flight check was minimal competency. A barely competent pilot can be granted a single-pilot exemption.
I did not know Mr. Hefner and know nothing about him other than that he was a retired airline pilot. I doubt that his competency, or lack of it, had anything to do with the accident. On the other hand, his age and physical health might have. There is a reason the FAA mandates a retirement age for airline pilots of 65 (and 60 for decades before that.) It is because our bodies start slowing down and become susceptible to disease and mental acuity decreases – and we don’t realize it. During the year and a half when I worked for Flight Safety, I trained pilots of all ages. I saw some older pilots who really shouldn’t have been flying. I don’t know if they had lost competency due to aging or had been bad pilots all along. In one instance I had a foreign client and because he was there by himself, the center put one of the instructors in the right seat, the Hawker assistant course manager. John was around 70 and active in the local warbird community. Because the client was Swiss, I was training him in mountains. I had them takeoff from Denver and fly across the Rockies to Aspen. When we were right over the Rockies, I gave them a rear bay overheat light. Now, the first item on the emergency checklist for that problem is to turn off the air valves one at a time and see if the light goes out. If it doesn’t go out, then the pilot is to turn both valves off and initiate an emergency descent. I had them on this route for a reason, I wanted the Swiss pilot to think. As soon as the light came on, John called for an emergency descent – from FL 180 over mountains over 14,000 feet! The Swiss pilot didn’t think – he did what John told him to do. If they had been in an airplane over the mountains, they’d have been dead. I don’t know why John reacted the way he did, whether it was age or something else. He was a flight examiner and should have known the procedure. I remember one retired airline pilot who came through the initial course to get a Hawker type rating. The man shouldn’t have been flying! He could barely hold a heading or altitude. Another older pilot came through who had worked for my previous employer before I went to work for them. The guy was bad! I don’t know if he had always been bad or if he was slipping because of age. Not all older pilots are bad. I had one client from my former employer. Jerry was 65, he did everything perfectly. Speaking of my former employer, after I accepted an early retirement offer and retired at age 55, one of their pilots laid down on his sofa to take a nap and never woke up. He and I were about the same age.
Although pilots are subject to regular medical examinations – every two years for private pilots, once a year for commercial pilots and every six months for airline transport-rated pilots including an EKG – some medical conditions can be waivered. Some conditions such as low blood sugar not controllable by medication cannot be waivered but most can. (Part of the flight physical is a questionnaire regarding particular medical conditions. Pilots are not always honest.) I failed a flight physical due to high blood sugar, but my FAA medical examiner applied for a waiver and the FAA granted it on the basis that my diabetes was controlled by medication. I continued to fly for almost a decade with a waiver (exemption) as long as I could otherwise meet the requirements of the FAA physical.
Another factor with all of this is the quality of the instructors at Flight Safety and the other flight training companies responsible for training pilots. Many of them are simply lacking in experience. I was the only instructor out of about six or eight Hawker instructors who had ever flown the airplane operationally. Flight Safety would – and probably still does – hire a new instructor then send them through the initial type rating course for whatever airplane they would be working with then send them through a refresher course to see how the course was taught. Another instructor would observe them until they were ready to be assigned to instruct students. NONE of them knew how to operate the flight management system, even though Flight Safety and the FAA required instructors to have their clients use everything in the simulator just like they would in the airplane. The simulator had a Universal FMS while I was used to the Global (GNS) system. I could figure it out and had my clients use it. I worked for Flight Safety through a massive layoff due to fallout from 9/11. The day I was finally let go I was in the pilot’s computer room cleaning out my files when I heard two instructors in another program talking about how they knew nothing about the GPS approaches the FAA had developed and which they were supposed to be teaching their new clients. We had one senior instructor/examiner in the Houston center who had NEVER flown any jet airplane operationally. He had started out as a flight instructor in Flight Safety’s academy in Florida then had been type-rated in a jet – all in the simulator. In short, just because a pilot has completed a course at one of the flight simulator companies doesn’t mean they received quality instruction. Pilots are trained to minimums, and their performance may be sketchy.
A question that would undoubtedly be raised if the pilot had suffered a medical issue as I suspect is - what about the passengers? In the Citation V, the passengers are usually in the back of the airplane and there is a partition between them and the pilot. Although there is an opening to allow access to the cockpit, the pilots are not clearly visible to the passengers unless they go up front. They can possibly see the pilot’s shoulders and that is about it. Pilots usually wear headsets and passengers don’t hear the radios. My experience is that passengers will often fall asleep. The Citation passengers may have very well slept through the whole thing. Or, they may have been awake and knew things were bad. We’ll never know.
The NTSB will issue a preliminary report in a few days, usually around 10 days after the incident. The actual report will take a year to complete. Until then, all we can do is speculate but I won’t be surprised if the final report is pilot incapacitation due to a medical condition.