Flares, a "head-butt" maneuver and missiles at the ready: Those are some of the military's options when a wayward aircraft raises alarms in U.S. airspace. All those options were in play on Sunday afternoon, when an unresponsive Cessna jet flew over Washington, D.C., and crashed in Virginia.
For officials in charge of Washington's sensitive airspace, "their need to react is going to be much more significant than if the same event occurred over the central United States," former Federal Aviation Administration official Michael J. McCormick tells NPR.
