UPDATE: Former Darien High Student, Post 53 Member, Killed in Florida Plane Crash

Updated 12:12 p.m., Monday:

A funeral date has not yet been announced for former Darien resident James H. “Jamie” Swiggart, 31, a victim in the Thursday night crash of an airplane he was piloting in Madison County, Fla. 

A lieutenant in the U.S. Navy with extensive flight experience, Swiggart was with his 18-year-old cousin. The two perished instantly in the crash, Madison County Sheriff Benjamin Stewart said, according to the website of WCTV, a television station in Florida.

Swiggart, who had an extensive record as a Navy pilot, was flying his two-seat civilian aircraft, an “experimental” Vans RV-4 plane, with his cousin, Maitland Harvey, WCTV reported. The plane had taken off Thursday afternoon from Ocala International Airport and was headed for Tallahassee International Airport.

At 7:30 p.m., the plane was over southwest Madison County (east of Tallahassee) when it lost contact with air traffic control, according to the report.

WTXL-TV reported that, according to local authorities, the plane was over nearby Gadsden County when Swiggart notified air traffic controllers that he had low visibility. The plane sent out an emergency signal just before it lost contact with ground control.

According to WTXL-TV, local officials were notified at about 8:30 p.m., when a search started, but the area is heavily wooded and the plane couldn’t be found at night. At about 9 a.m. Friday morning, the crash site was found.

____________

See also:

• Jamie Swiggart: Flying, Sailing, Service to His Country and His Community
• Obituary: James H. Swiggart, U.S. Navy Pilot, 31, Former Darien Resident

____________

According to the Associated Press, The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board were investigating the cause of the crash (they typically investigate crashes), “but officials say dreary weather conditions and poor visibility could have been a factor.”

An obituary and funeral information have not yet been released by Swiggart’s family. His mother, Carolyn Swiggart, is a lawyer with offices in Greenwich and a former member of the Darien Representative Town Meeting.

Grew up in Darien

Darienite.com found much of the following information online and was given the rest from a family member who asked not to be identified:

In high school, Jamie Swiggart was a member of the Indian Harbor Yacht Club junior sailing program in Greenwich and competed in local regattas. Starting in 1999, he was a member of Darien EMS-Post 53, serving as an emergency medical technician, ambulance driver and crew chief. (According to his LinkedIn account, Swiggart remained associated with Post 53 for about 10 years, until August 2010.)

A member of Boy Scout Troop 53, he was an Eagle Scout.

After graduating from Darien High School, he attended the Hill School in Pottstown, Pa. on a United States Naval Academy Foundation scholarship, then in 2003 was appointed to the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis.

Navy pilot

He graduated in 2007 with a bachelor of science degree, majoring in political science and French, and was commissioned an ensign in the Navy. For about three months in the summer of 2007, he was an intern in the office of the naval attache in the U.S. embassy in Paris. He returned there in June and July 2009.

A passionate sailor and pilot, he was a member of the USNA Varsity Offshore Sailing Team, the New York Yacht Club and the Storm Trysail Club.

In January 2010, he was designated a “naval aviator” (a pilot), and qualified on the E2-C “Hawkeye” aircraft. He worked in 2011 and 2012 as a public affairs officer, based at the Naval Air Station in Point Mugu, Calif., writing articles for navy publications, handling social media and getting information to news reporters.

From 2012 to 2014, as an aircraft division officer based mostly at Point Mugu, he supervised Navy squadron maintenance shops in addition to flying.

For almost nine months in 2013, he was deployed aboard USS Nimitz and was named one of the top five pilots during that deployment, in which the ship went along the West Coast, through the Pacificto Asia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and the Mediterranean. He had over 160 arrested landings on 5 different aircraft carriers.

In March 2014, he became a jet pilot instructor at Meridian Naval Air Station in Meridian, Miss.

In July 2014, he was quoted extensively in a Washington Post article about the crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 in eastern Ukraine, and that article was later quoted extensively by other publications.

(Some initial reports from Florida contained some incorrect information: Swiggart was 31, not 32, and his first name was wrongly given as “William” in some accounts.)

Updated at 1:27 p.m., Saturday:

James “Jamie” Swiggart, 31, formerly of Darien, did not survive a plane crash Thursday in Madison County, Florida, according to news reports.

Swiggart, a U.S. Navy pilot, was in a private plane when was over Gadsden County and notified the Federal Aviation Authority that there was low visibility, according to WTXL-TV in Tallahassee, Fl., an ABC affiliate television station.

Swiggart was educated at Darien High School, earning five letters in track as a pole vaulter, and was a member of Darien EMS-Post 53. He later entered the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis and became a Navy pilot.

Since March 2014, he had been a jet instructor pilot and was rated with over 1,400 hours of flight experience, according to his Linked-in page.

According to WTXI:

Soon afterward, the plane sent out an emergency signal and traffic control officials lost all communication with it. The FAA notified the Madison County Sheriff’s Department at 8:30 p.m., Thursday.

Neither “Jamie Swiggart,” identified as a Navy pilot, nor Maitland Jane Harvey, “believed to be about 18 years old,” survived a plane crash, the Sheriff’s Department said. No other occupants of the plane, if there were any, were identified.

The plane was flying from Ocala to Tallahassee International Airport.

Update 1:27 p.m.: According to other news reports from Florida:

Swiggart was identified as “William Swiggart” in some reports — including those from the Tallahassee Democrat and News4Jax.com, the website of WJXT-TV in Jacksonville, Fl., but other news reports identified the deceased as Jamie or James Swiggart and nearly all identify Swiggart as a military pilot assigned to the Naval Air Station in Meridian, Miss.

According to the Democrat, Harvey, 18, was Swiggart’s cousin, and Swiggart was flying the private plane, an RV-4 two-person plane which was found Friday morning in a heavily wooded area.

The plane had left Jim Taylor Field at Ocala International Airport for a 170-minute flight to the airport in Tallahassee, the newspaper reported.

Swiggart and Maitland were cousins, the Madison County sheriff said, according to the WCTV television station website.