Unresponsive Cessna 421 Pilot Crashes in Gulf of Mexico

Bethany Whitfield

Thursday, April 19, 2012 at 11:02 PM ET

Verified

** The flight path of the Cessna 421 shows the
airplane flying erratically before crashing in the
Gulf of Mexico.**

Key Takeaways:

Authorities have suspended the search for the body of a 65-year-old doctor flying a Cessna 421 that crashed into the Gulf of Mexico.
The pilot was unresponsive to air traffic control for several hours, with F-15 pilots observing the aircraft with iced-over windows, erratic flight, and fluctuating altitude before it went down.
The aircraft remained intact initially but then sank into 1,500-foot-deep water, with no signs of the pilot's survival seen by Coast Guard members.
While the cause is unknown, the incident is being compared to the 1999 Payne Stewart crash, which involved a loss of cabin pressure.

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Authorities have suspended the search for the body of the Cessna 421 pilot who crashed into the Gulf of Mexico Thursday afternoon after remaining unresponsive to air traffic control calls for several hours.

The Cessna 421 took off from Slidell, Louisiana, on Thursday morning and headed southeast over the Gulf, but drew concern from air traffic controllers around 9 a.m. when they lost contact with the pilot. As the aircraft circled erratically over the Gulf in the region near Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, controllers at the Jacksonville Air Traffic Control Center requested two F-15s flying in the area to assess the situation.