Unconscious pilot crashes into Gulf of Mexico

[Poll_Blind]

From Reuters:
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The U.S. Coast Guard dispatched a plane, a helicopter and a Coast Guard cutter to the crash site, about 120 miles west of Tampa, Florida, but the pilot did not emerge from the downed plane, according Coast Guard spokeswoman Elizabeth Bordelon.

The twin-engine Cessna landed gently and floated for a time, but then sank in the Gulf where the water is 1,500 feet deep, the Coast Guard said.

--snip--

wo F-15 fighter jets sent up to intercept the Cessna because it was flying erratically said the pilot was "unresponsive," and the jets stayed with the plane, said Stacey Knott, a spokeswoman for the North American Aerospace Defense Command in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Tragic, with similarities to the untimely death of Payne Stewart and five others.

PB

[Cooley Hurd]

1. If depressurization is to blame, the pilot was dead when he hit the water...

[WillowTree]

2. Sounded as if that's what happened.

I heard one report that the pilots chasing said that the plane's windows were fogged/frosted. I believe they said the same thing about Stewart's plane.

Very sad regardless.

[Cooley Hurd]

3. I read the same thing

...and also thought of Payne Stewart.

[madokie]

4. Was it the same kind of plane

Best I remember Stewarts was a two engine Cessna

[guitar man]

5. Cessna 421

Twin piston engine, pressurized cabin

[Cooley Hurd]

6. Both were pressurized, but Stewarts plane was jet-engined

...this was a normally-aspirated engined-aircraft

[madokie]

8. Ok, thanks

[Archae]

7. If this was in the "Bermuda Triangle" George Nutty...I mean Noory would be going apeshit over it.

"Another mysterious disappearance!!!"