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| Jane and Larry Glazer were killed in a small private plane (similar to the one pictured, right). Photo: Wikipedia Creative Commons ; AP (2) |
(Correction: It was reported yesterday that 3 persons were aboard the unresponsive plane. Only 2 persons were aboard.)
A prominent upstate developer and his wife died Friday when their plane mysteriously plunged into the Atlantic off Jamaica after flying aimlessly over the ocean with no radio contact and US fighter jets in pursuit, authorities said.
Rochester millionaire Larry Glazer and entrepreneur wife Jane, both 68, were killed in the crash roughly 14 miles northeast of Port Antonio at about 2:15 p.m., their family confirmed.
Their single-engine Socata TBM 900 took off from Rochester Airport at 8:45 a.m. headed for Naples, Fla. — where the couple had a vacation home — with Glazer at the controls and his wife the only passenger.
But Glazer later contacted air-traffic controllers in Atlanta and requested permission to fly at a lower altitude because of an unspecified problem on board, the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle reported.
The Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement that controllers lost all radio contact with the plane — which cost nearly $4 million and is one of the world’s fastest of its type — shortly after 10 a.m.
The North American Aerospace Defense Command scrambled a pair of F-15 fighter jets about 11:30 a.m. to track “an unresponsive aircraft currently flying over the Atlantic Ocean.”
NORAD broke off their pursuit about 1:15 p.m. after Glazer’s plane entered Cuban airspace, but one of the F-15 pilots reported seeing a man slumped over the controls and the cockpit’s windows frosting up.
That led to speculation that the plane’s cabin may have lost air pressure, leaving the Glazers unconscious due to a lack of oxygen, with the plane continuing to fly on autopilot.
“What we’re talking about is incapacitation of the pilot — and for that to happen, he has to be at a high altitude and the pressurization system would have to fail in such a way that he would not recognize it,” Hadrian Dailey, a veteran aircraft technician, told the Rochester newspaper.
“There are an awful lot of things that would have to go wrong for an airplane to just continue on and the pilot not being able to change that.”
That theory could explain why controllers on the ground got no response from the plane, which ultimately crashed when it ran out of fuel after flying about 1,700 miles. The FAA is investigating.
Maj. Basil Jarrett of the Jamaican Defense Force said an oil slick was spotted where the plane went down and that the search for the wreckage would continue Saturday.
Glazer was CEO of Buckingham Properties and owned or had an interest in 13 million square feet of real estate in Rochester, including the landmark Xerox Tower, the Bausch+Lomb building and Midtown Tower.
“He is precious in 100 ways. He is one of a kind. This is a nightmare,” Heidi Zimmer-Meyer, president of the Rochester Downtown Development Corp., told the paper.
Gov. Cuomo praised Glazer and his wife, who owned QCI Direct, a catalog company.
“The Glazers were innovative and generous people who were committed to revitalizing downtown Rochester and making the city they loved a better place for all. I offer my deepest condolences to the Glazers’ family and friends,” Cuomo said in a statement.
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