FAA: Unresponsive Plane Crashes North Of Jamaica
BALDWIN: It has just been over an hour since this plane, this small aircraft, crashed off the Coast of Jamaica. We know it took off right around 8:30 this morning from Rochester, New York, was supposed to land in Naples. And we now know that did not happen. What we now have is a transcript. We're working on the audio. But we have a transcript. Go ahead and throw up the graphics, and we'll parse this through with Miles O'Brien in just a second. Here's what we have. This is from the pilot. We need to descend down to about 180. We have an indication that is not correct in the plane and then you hear the response from the controller. Stand by, 900 KN descend and maintain 250. This is from liveatc.net, air traffic control. Pilot responds, 250, we need to get lower 900KN. Controller, working on that. That's the bit we have. Miles O'Brien, CNN aviation analyst. When you see that, translate that for me.</s>MILES O'BRIEN, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: You know, I just listened to the tape itself. The conversations between the pilot, a high time, TBM pilot, more than 5,000 hours in TBMs. This was a brand-new model of TBM that he was flying. But he had a lot of experience in the aircraft. And he indicated to the controller in Atlanta Center, which covers that sector of North Carolina, that he had a problem with an indication, in an instrument and in a very nonchalant way said he needed to get to flight level 180, which is 18,000 feet. This was an area with a fair amount of traffic and the controller not hearing the magic word. The magic word in this case being "emergency." We have an emergency. He in a nonchalant way the pilot asked to get lower to 18,000 feet. The controller ended up sending him off to the west and down to 25,000 feet, which explains that jog we saw. And after that, there were a few other exchanges where the controller asks the pilot to get down to even lower altitude, 20,000 feet. And he was nonresponsive to those commands and eventually nonresponsive verbally. All of this taking place in the span of about 10 minutes. So something was wrong with that airplane. The pilot confessed that there was a problem, but did not state it as an emergency, which if it was, in fact, a depressurization event would be an emergency. You declare an emergency and you go down. You own that air space. And you're -- the controller will not say, I'll get back to you and send you off in a vector and give you a -- you know, an altitude higher than you expect. And eventually, this plane became nonresponsive. The controller tried to relay with other aircraft, tried to talk to the pilot doing -- with that method, but there was just no response. So it's just chilling to listen to this -- Brooke.</s>BALDWIN: Miles O'Brien, stay with me. I want to parse through this a little more with you and Mary Schiavo because I also want to double back to one of your questions, how much training, how experience would this pilot have been to not utter that magic word "emergency." Thank you, Miles. We have someone on the phone from the Jamaican Defense Force who can walk us through exactly what's happening now at the crash scene, 14 miles off the coast of Jamaica. We'll talk to him after this.