Military jets chased Florida crash pilot

A 15-year-old student pilot who crashed a light aircraft into a 42-storey Florida skyscraper was being pursued by a Coast Guard helicopter and two military jets for flying without permission, officials said tonight.

Officials said Charles Bishop of Palm Harbor was killed in crash on Saturday night.

‘‘There was no doubt he died on impact,’’ said Captain Bill Wade, a spokesman for the Tampa Fire Department.

The crash occurred after Bishop’s grandmother took him to the National Aviation Academy flight school for a flying lesson, said Marianne Pasha, a Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman.

She said an instructor told Bishop to check equipment on the four-seat 2000 Cessna 172R before the lesson.

‘‘The next thing the instructor knew he was gone,’’ Pasha said.

Though terrorism was quickly discounted, the televised image of a plane blasting a hole in the side of a skyscraper was a chilling reminder of the World Trade Centre attacks. The plane’s tail dangled near the 28th floor of the 42-storey Bank of America building.

Only a few office workers and the staff of a club in the building were present at the time of the crash. None was injured.

Michael Cronin, an attorney for the National Aviation Academy, said Bishop had been taking lessons since March 2001 and had logged about six hours of flight time. Bishop was a year shy of being able to fly alone and two years too young to earn a pilot’s licence.

‘‘The bottom line is he essentially stole the aircraft,’’ Cronin said. ‘‘We aren’t going to speculate what his mental state or motivations were.’’

A Coast Guard helicopter on routine patrol intercepted the plane and attempted to give the pilot visual signals to land at a small airport, but the pilot did not respond, Coast Guard Lt Charlotte Pittman said.

Two F-15 fighter jets were also scrambled from a base 200 miles away, as a precaution, said Capt Kirstin Reimann at the North American Aerospace Defence Command. They arrived after the crash.

Sheriff’s Sgt Greg Tita said the FBI was interviewing Bishop’s family and that there was no record of the ninth-grade student running into problems with the law in the past.

Neighbours said the boy who lived with his mother in Palm Harbor, a community about 25 miles west of Tampa, kept to himself.

‘‘He rode my bus to school. He sat in the front row. He always had sunglasses on for some reason,’’ said David Ontiveros, a 14-year-old neighbour. ‘‘He never talked to anybody.’’

The 28th floor houses the law firm of Shumaker, Loop and Kendrick. Managing partner Greg Yadley said one attorney and her husband were in the offices at the time of the crash, but were not injured.

An hour before, he said, an attorney had been at a desk the plane smashed into.

‘‘It could have been possibly a tragic situation,’’ Yadley said. ‘‘We were lucky.’’

Fire department officials said the damage in the building was limited to the office where the plane hit and the same small area directly above and directly below.

Most of the building is expected to be open tomorrow, though there was some concern about chunks of the facade falling.