WASHINGTON – The air traffic calls from the pilot of the jet that crashed into a Gaithersburg neighborhood showed no distress beforehand.
Moments before the twin engine Embraer EMB 500/Phenom 100 went down less then a mile from the air park runway, it made an approach call.
“It sounded like a normal approach. They made a six-mile call and then a three-mile call for runway 1-4. They were communicating with other people in the pattern,” says Mark Baggett, professional pilot and trainer with North Atlantic Flight Training.
He heard the call while flying near Montgomery Air Park yesterday. Listen to the entire conversation in real time from LiveATC.net here.
Since there is no tower at the air park, Baggett says pilots broadcast their movements and concerns both on the ground and in the air.
One of those pilots concerned about the number of birds asked for someone in the air park office to pull out the cannon, which Baggett explains makes a loud noise to scare the birds off.
Baggett’s theory is the birds presented a problem for the jet’s pilot when he was descending out of the clouds. An NTSB spokesperson says they are looking into bird interference as a possible cause of the crash.
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