Originally Posted by
JohnnyRocket
Interesting to view the flight path - but what would cause it to loop back around like that?
I presume the flight plan would have taken it as far as Suffolk County airport... but why a U-turn?
Would be interesting to see what the default behavior of the C560 FMS is after completing its route without landing and remaining on autopilot. Perhaps it was simply heading to the departure waypoint. Or perhaps there was some fragment of a flight plan beyond KISP that included the departure aircraft (or something else along that line). Or perhaps it wasn't heading to any particular waypoint at all, just a heading direction that pointed back to the origin direction. Very puzzling behavior for an FMS. At any rate, it flew inbound to but above the SFRA/FRZ near Washington DC and caused quite a stir.
Despite the tragedy for those aboard, it is fortunate that the plane crashed in the national forest in a very remote area. With additional fuel, it may easily have crashed closer to whatever waypoint/direction it was heading to and in a populated area, causing something even worse, unless the fighter jets decided to shoot it down first.
This was a 1990 model, so the original Citation V before the later upgrades (Ultra than Excel).
More details to come....