By Arturo Castañares
Editor-at-Large

A small four-seat airplane flew out to sea for about two hours on Sunday before crashing into the ocean after the pilot presumably became incapacitated and ran out of fuel.

The 2014 Cessna Corvallis TTx T240 departed Ramona airport at approximately 1:50pm and flew toward Montgomery Field airport in Kearney Mesa but continued flying more than 400 miles out to sea.

The pilot, 67-year old La Jolla resident Tsotne David Javahishvili, requested permission to land at Montgomery Field but did not respond to any additional radio calls from air traffic controllers as the airplane overflew the airport and continued flying west from San Diego.

The airplane, tail number N636CS, continued on a steady southwesterly track and altitude of approximately 2,600' for nearly two hours before descending and spinning into the ocean around 4:30pm consistent with flying on autopilot until experiencing a loss of power after fuel exhaustion.

Jacahishvili was a Director at San Diego-based Ambrx, a publicly traded clinical stage biopharmaceutical company. Originally from the country of Georgia, Jacahishvili began his career at Georgia’s Tbilisi Institute of Plant Biochemistry after graduating from Tbilisi State University and later became a Professor at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, before joining La Jolla’s Scripps Research Institute.

The accident airplane was owned by Scripps Research Institute CEO Peter Schultz who was not on board at the time of the accident.

The Cessna TTX is a high-performance airplane with a six-cylinder, fuel-injected, twin-turbocharged engine and maximum range of 1,229 nautical miles when carrying its full 102 gallons of aviation fuel.

It is unclear how much fuel the airplane had when Jacahishvili departed, but the total flight distance was only approximately half of the airplane’s maximum range.

No wreckage of the airplane has been located.

The National Traffic Safety Board will investigate the incident.

Castañares is the Publisher and Editor-at-Large of La Prensa San Diego. He has received several journalism awards, including the Ruben Salazar Award for Excellence in Print Journalism, the San Diego County Taxpayers' Association Media Watchdog award, and several First Place awards from the San Diego Pro Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. Castañares is also an FAA-licensed private airplane pilot. He can be reached directly at art@laprensasd.com.