Fighters Escort Plane to Landing

A small plane that had been circling near restricted military airspace in the Mojave Desert for about three hours Thursday was intercepted by fighter jets and escorted to a landing at Palmdale Airport, aviation officials said.

“We could see him on radar, but we couldn’t reach him by radio, and we didn’t know who he was,” said Donn Walker, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration, which had been monitoring the flight.

Walker said concerns about why the twin-engine Aero Commander was circling at 18,000 feet near Edwards Air Force Base led the FAA to contact the North American Air Defense Command, which sent F-16 fighter jets to escort the plane to a landing about 4:15 p.m.

Late Thursday, the pilot and passenger were released without charges after the FBI verified that they were taking aerial photographs for a real estate business. The men, whose names were not released, were in FBI custody for more than five hours, officials said.

The 19-year-old plane is registered to Ja Mar Ind Inc. in Santa Clara. The firm could not be reached for comment.

Although the pilot did not enter restricted airspace, he lingered close enough to raise controllers’ concerns.

Thursday’s incident occurred about two weeks after two men in a small plane caused the frenzied evacuation of tens of thousands from the U.S. Capitol and the White House -- and narrowly escaped being shot down by F-16s -- when they strayed deep into restricted airspace.

The FAA revoked the license of the Cessna 150’s pilot, Hayden L. Sheaffer, after determining he “constitutes an unacceptable risk to safety in air commerce.”

The FAA said Sheaffer had permission to enter the airspace after entering a flight plan and maintaining radio contact with controllers. But lightning knocked out Sheaffer’s radio.