The owner of a single-engine plane that went down in the Pacific after missing its landing and flying hundreds of miles over the water before being lost has released a statement about the presumed victim, Tsotne Javahishvili, whom he described as a dear friend:
“Tsotne was a kind and wonderful person and a dear friend whose great passion was flying. He was a skilled and careful pilot, and we flew many 100s of hours together. Tsotne was a brilliant biologist who made important contributions to advancing the use of antibody drug conjugates in medicine. I’ll miss him dearly and send my deepest condolences to his family.“
An investigation is underway after the four-seat plane owned by chemist and CEO Peter Schultz of the Scripps Research Institute went missing. The aircraft’s pilot was reported unresponsive while en route to San Diego Montgomery-Gibbs Airport.
NTSB investigating Sunday’s presumed crash of a Cessna T240 airplane into the Pacific Ocean about 470 miles west of San Diego, California.
— NTSB Newsroom (@NTSB_Newsroom) July 17, 2025
The single-engine 2014 Cessna T240 Corvalis TTx took off from Ramona Airport Sunday afternoon and was presumed to have been destroyed following an impact with the Pacific Ocean about 470 miles off the coast of San Diego, according to the Aviation Safety Network, a global database for tracking accidents.
The National Transportation Safety Board has launched an investigation.
A map from FlightAware showing the path taken by the Schultz’s plane, which had Tail No. N636CS.
Around 1:55 p.m. Sunday, the pilot, presumably Javahishvili, checked in with Montgomery-Gibbs airport control tower for landing. About five minutes later, he was cleared to land at runway 28R, but he gave no response, and the airplane continued flying west at an altitude of 2,600 feet and continued beyond the track, the ASN reported.
Javahishvili, who lived in Del Mar, according to his LinkedIn profile, is believed to have been the solo occupant of the plane. A bio of him on the Genomics website, which is based in Tbilisi, in the country of Georgia, says that he began his career at Tbilisi Institute of Plant Biochemistry after attending Tbilisi State University. He came to America as a professor at Evergreen State College in Olympia, according to the website, before joining the Scripps Research Institute in its department of experimental medicine.
Scripps said that Javahishvili was not employed at the institute at the time of crash; the Genomics site states that he had been a scientific supervisor with that organization since 2020.
The University of Georgia also acknowledged Javahishvili’s passing, noting that “We are closely following the ongoing investigation into the plane disappearance off San Diego coast, piloted by our colleague, Tsotne Javakhishvili, founder and director of the Institute of Synthetic Biology of the University of Georgia. We extend our full support to his family, friends, students, and colleagues during this uncertain and difficult time.”
In his statement, Shultz said that Scripps research would be establishing a postdoctoral fellowship in Javahishvili’s name.
No remnants of the plane have been located.
