PENSACOLA, Fla. — Coast Guard crews saw no signs Thursday that the pilot of a small plane survived when his Cessna went down in the Gulf of Mexico about three hours after two F-15 fighter jets tried to make contact with him.
Coast Guard Chief John Edwards said the plane landed right-side up on the ocean surface and had been floating right after the crash. Planes did not see a life raft deploy or anything to indicate the pilot — the lone person aboard — was alive, the Coast Guard said.
The Cessna 421C later sank into the Gulf about 120 miles west of Tampa, Fla., in about 1,500 feet of water.
Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen said the plane was flying from Slidell, La., to Sarasota, Fla. She said controllers lost contact with the pilot at 9 a.m. and the Coast Guard said it went down about 12:10 p.m.
Authorities have not identified the pilot. But Bill Huete, a mechanic at the Slidell Airport, said Dr. Peter Hertzak, an OB-GYN who worked in the community just northeast of New Orleans, was the only person who piloted the plane. Huete said the doctor’s wife told him her husband was flying the plane that morning.
Huete had worked on the plane for Hertzak and knew the doctor and his family for years. He described Hertzak as an excellent pilot.
Two F-15 fighter jets tried to make contact with the plane and were flying with it and monitoring it, but weren’t able to hail the pilot, said North American Aerospace Defense Command spokesman John Cornelio.
