A 23-year-old man, who was flying solo in a reportedly stolen plane, cut off communications with air traffic control just before the plane crashed in a Texas field near the Oklahoma border on Wednesday.
The crash killed the pilot, who has been identified as Logan Timothy James from Stokesdale, North Carolina.
Before the crash, Mr. James took off by himself in a single-engine Cessna 172 from Addison Airport. The aircraft crashed after flying 80 miles northeast, officials say.
The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) said the plane was stolen from the ATP Flight School at Addison Airport, about 15 miles north of downtown Dallas.
At 6:53 p.m., Mr. James boarded the plane owned by the ATP Flight School, apparently going up to practice flight maneuvers.
Once airborne, Mr. James told the air traffic controller he would “depart to the east.”
“I’m climbing up through the clouds and just going to head east outside of everything,” he said before ominously declaring: “About right now, you’ll probably realize that I’m not going to listen to y’all’s instructions, and I’m just heading to east Texas.”
In a calm voice, he then informed flight control that he was going to disable the plane’s radio system.
“I’m going to pull the comm 1 circuit breaker and the comm 2 circuit breaker right here soon, as soon as I unkey the mic.”
“Say again?” the controller responded.
Flight control attempted to contact the plane for 10 minutes but received no answer.
According to flightradar data the plane first flew east, took a turn north near Sulphur Springs, then turned northwest near Cox Field. When it approached the Texas-Oklahoma border, the plane began to nosedive at 5,000 feet per minute.
The aircraft crashed in an open field 9 miles northeast of Telephone, Texas, at 8:26 p.m. local time.
Audio from the flight communications was published online on the VAS Aviation YouTube channel.
At the moment, it remains unclear whether the pilot attempted to radio for help before he crashed or whether this was an act of suicide.
Retired Navy captain and aviation expert Armen Kurdian said the investigation will shed light on the real reasons behind the crash and the victim’s intentions.
“The accident investigation should hopefully answer a lot of those questions about why he got in there and probably interview anybody that he knew like parents, friends, that sort of thing,” Mr. Kurdian told NBC News.
“And, of course, maybe some of the flight instructors at that school, assuming he was actually attending that flight school as a student.”
The DPS said that the investigation is led by the National Transportation Safety Board, with assistance from the Federal Aviation Administration.
