The vastly experienced pilot who was at the helm of the Cessna Citation 560 that crashed into the woods in Virginia earned himself the nickname ‘Mr Safety’ after flying more than 25,000 hours for Southwest Airlines.
Jeff Hefner was killed alongside Adina Azarian, 49, her 2-year-old daughter and the child’s live-in nanny, Evadnie Smith, when the plane smashed into a mountainous wooded area having already flown through restricted airspace over Washington D.C.
The flight left Elizabethton, Tennessee, at 1:13pm on Sunday and was headed for MacArthur Airport in Long Island. It’s thought that the plane may have lost pressurization, knocking everyone on conscious. They continued to fly on autopilot until they ran out of fuel.
Cerebral hypoxia occurs when a plane climbs too high, the higher the plane is, the faster those on board lose consciousness. Due to the damage sustained in the crash, the National Transportation Safety Board has said the investigation could take up to a year to conclude.
Hefner was a retired Southwest Airlines pilot who was previously on the board of directors of the pilot’s union. He had the highest-level Federal Aviation Administration medical certificate and was cleared to fly jets as large as Boeing 737s, reports the Washington Post.
Pilot Jeff Hefner was at the helm of the Cessna Citation 560 plane that crashed into the Virginia woods on Sunday
During his time flying for Southwest Airlines, Hefner earned the nickname Mr Safety
The jet was carrying Adina Azarian, her two-year-old daughter, their nanny and the pilot. It took off at 1.13pm from Elizabethton Airport in Tennessee and was scheduled to land at MacArthur Airport in Islip, on Long Island. Instead, it flew north then performed an about-turn and crashed in Virginia
During the course of his 25 years with Southwest, Hefner accumulated more than 25,000 hours flying time and was also an aircraft mechanic.
Speaking to the Post, Florida lawyer Dan Newlin who often employed Hefner to fly him to various locations, described him as Mr Safety. ‘When it came to flying, he was always super serious, super cautious and very focused,’ Newlin said.
In a statement from the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, Hefner is referred to as a ‘defender of his fellow pilots’ safety, careers, and family.’
The NTSB said investigators plan to conclude its on-scene investigative work Wednesday from the southwest Virginia crash site of the light plane that caused a security scare on Sunday when it flew over heavily restricted airspace near Washington.
Lead investigator Adam Gerhardt told the Post that his team are yet to establish if the plane had a voice and data recorders due to the extent of the damage. Gerhardt said that the aircraft was unrecognizable as a plane.
‘This is a rather extreme example of an airplane that impacted terrain. It’s already a challenging process and it makes it that much more challenging for us, but we will be here for as long as it takes,’ Gerhardt said.
The owner of the plane, John Rumpel, agrees with the notion that the plane lost pressurization.
‘They all just would have gone to sleep and never woke up,’ the GOP donor said.
Azarian’s two-year-old daughter, seen here with her mom in a recent photo, also died in the crash
Adina Azarian and her two-year-old daughter Aria died in the crash. They were traveling with their nanny, who also lost their life
Adina, 49, was a Hamptons luxury realtor. She and her daughter were flying from Tennessee to their home in East Hampton.
In a statement to The New York Times hours later, a tearful Rumpel revealed his daughter and granddaughter had been returning home from a four-day visit to his own estate in North Carolina when the plane tumbled out of the sky at what he said was a rate of ‘20,000 feet-a-minute.’
‘It descended at 20,000 feet a minute, and nobody could survive a crash from that speed,’ Rumpel said.
It is the second tragedy in their family – in 1994, another of his daughters died in a scuba diving accident when she was just 19.
In a post to social media, both Rumpel and his wife told friends and relatives that the crash Sunday had claimed their ‘entire family’ – with Virginia State Police later telling DailyMail.com there were no survivors among the four confirmed to be onboard.
The Department of Defense scrambled F-16 fighter jets, after the plane began to traverse to restricted airspace, which created a sonic boom over the U.S. capital as they pursued the Cessna.
The NTSB released a photo late Tuesday of the crash site with wreckage fragments; investigators are working on a wreckage recovery plan to determine what kind of equipment is needed.
‘During the next phase of the investigation, investigators will analyze manufacturing and maintenance records and conduct interviews,’ the NTSB said.
Adina’s adoptive parents are prominent GOP donors, John and Barbara Rumpel, shown with Trump in March 2020
Barbara Rumpel announced the deaths of her daughter and granddaughter yesterday
On Monday, officials said air traffic controllers lost contact shortly after takeoff with the pilot Sunday after the Cessna took off from Elizabethton, Tennessee at 1.13pm. EDT headed to Long Island MacArthur Airport, about 50 miles east of Manhattan. Controllers lost communication with the airplane during its ascent.
The last air traffic control communication attempt with the airplane was at around 1.28pm.
The FAA said it reported the failure of the pilot to respond to controllers to the domestic events network that includes military, security and law enforcement agencies at around 1:36 p.m.
Officials said the plane appeared to be on autopilot. The NTSB said the airplane was at 31,000 feet and eventually climbed to 34,000 feet, where it remained until 3:23 p.m. when it began to descend. The airplane crashed at approximately 3:32 p.m.
Military pilots attempted to contact the pilot, who was unresponsive and also used flares attempting to get the pilot’s attention.
White House spokesperson John Kirby defended the military’s response Wednesday when asked why it took more than 90 minutes for fighters to intercept the plane from the last FAA contact, saying the military ‘responded in a very textbook fashion here.’
The crash is reminiscent of other incidents involving unresponsive pilots. Golfer Payne Stewart died in 1999 along with four others after the aircraft he was in flew thousands of miles with the pilot and passengers unresponsive. The plane eventually crashed in South Dakota with no survivors.
In the case of Stewart’s flight, the plane lost cabin pressure, causing the occupants to lose consciousness because of oxygen deprivation.
As the FAA continues to vet what caused the unexplained incident new details about the family affected by the tragedy continue to come to light.
Boasting deep ties to the Florida area, the Rumpels are large-scale donors to several conservative political candidates, including former President Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, having given a combined $250,000 to a PAC supporting Trump’s 2020 bid, and several thousand toward DeSantis’ successful Gubernatorial run as well.
They’ve also donated thousands more to figures such as Senate candidate Herschel Walker and Congressional candidate Laura Loomer, and federal hopefuls such as Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, and Trump back in 2016.
In the decades before, the pair gained notoriety as a power couple after meeting in John’s native New York in the 1960s, at an office building that Barbara worked in and John, already a real estate mogul owned.
Within a few years, the pair would wed, before welcoming two children in 1973 and 1975.
Barbara Rumpel, meanwhile, was also a co-chair of ‘Second Amendment Coalition for Trump-Pence’ in 2016. She has been on the NRA’s Women’s Leadership Council since 2002 and spent more than six years on the organization’s executive committee.
The Rumpels have even committed their entire real estate portfolio to the pro-second amendment group.
‘We want to leave a legacy that will help preserve this country as we know it and as it is meant to be,’ Barbara wrote in a statement on an NRA website.