A plane headed for San Diego Montgomery-Gibbs Executive airport didn’t land Sunday afternoon and later disappeared far off the coast.
No official reports have been released yet, but speculation ensued online after the flight failed to land though a crash was never reported.
Navy Region Southwest
confirmed that it was involved in a U.S. Coast Guard-led investigation of the flight, but deferred all other queries to the USCG.
The
National Transportation Safety Board
has launched an investigation into Sunday’s presumed crash, the department said in a statement.
The Coast Guard’s San Diego Sector did not return calls seeking comment, nor did the Federal Aviation Administration.
The owner of the plane, according to the
Federal Aviation Administration registry
, is
Scripps Research
CEO Peter Schultz. The plane was a Cessna T240 Corvalis TTx.
Schultz was not piloting the plane, according to
ABC10
, which said the pilot was Schultz’s friend and an experienced pilot.
That person’s identity has not been released.
The flight took off from the Ramona airport around 2 p.m. Sunday. The pilot checked in with Montgomery tower to land and was cleared for the runway, but the tower never heard back from the pilot, according to the
Aviation Safety Network
.
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The Aviation Safety Network provides information on airliner accidents and safety issues using three different databases. Information is pulled mostly from government agencies, but the ASN Wikibase can be updated by anyone, though information is reviewed before appearing online.
The information for Sunday’s missing flight falls under ASN’s Wikibase.
Instead of landing at the Montgomery-Gibbs airport, the plane kept flying, disappearing some 400-500 miles off the coast.
Updated 7:20 p.m. July 16
, 2025.
