When the engineers analyzed Katherine’s reduced data, they were fascinated, realizing they were uncovering something they had not quite seen before. It turned out that the Piper had flown perpendicularly across the flight path of a jet plane that had just passed through the area. A disturbance caused by a plane could trouble the air for as long as half an hour after it flew through. The wake vortex of the larger plane had acted like an invisible trip wire: upon crossing the rough river of air left behind by the jet, the propeller plane stumbled in midair and tumbled out of the sky.
