Chilling details emerge as plane owned by renowned chemist disappears minutes before planned landing

A small plane has mysteriously disappeared off the coast of San Diego.

On Sunday afternoon (July 13), an aircraft owned by Peter Schultz took off from Ramona Airport.

The flight was headed for San Diego and at 1:55pm it was cleared to approach at Montgomery-Gibbs Airport, California.

The pilot asked if he was okay to land and air traffic control got back to him five minutes later and said he was good to go - but they received no response.

In this short time it appears as if something went wrong on the aircraft and the plane continued to fly for some 500 miles off the coast before it disappeared, 10News San Diego reports.

According to FlightAware, the aircraft was last seen on Sunday at 11:29pm UTC.

The plane ended up flying hundreds of miles off the San Diego coast (FlightAware)

The plane is thought to have been carrying just one person, and it wasn't its owner Schultz. Instead, it was a friend of the renewed chemist, described as an experienced pilot, who was flying the plane.

The Scripps Research Institute (which Schultz is the CEO of) confirmed this information to 10News but did not share the name of the missing pilot out of respect for his family.

Tragically, it's believed that the plane has been destroyed in the incident.

"A Cessna T240 Corvalis TTx, N636CS, is presumed to have been destroyed following an impact with the Pacific Ocean about 470 miles off San Diego, California," says the Aviation Safety Network.

"Preliminary flighttrack and ATC data shows that the airplane departed Ramona Airport (KRNM), on a flight to San Diego (KMYF). At 1355, the pilot checked with Montgomery tower for a full stop landing.

"About five minutes later, the pilot was cleared for a straight in for runway 28R, but there was no response from the pilot. The airplane continued flying west at an altitude of 2600 ft till the end of the track."

The aircraft was owned by Peter Schultz, CEO of The Scripps Research Institute (Scripps Research)

Rich Martindell, pilot and former aircraft accident investigator, has weighed in on the matter and shared what he thinks may have happened on Sunday.

"It was just after he turned southwest that the long straight line begins. It looks very indicative of a loss of consciousness or incapacitation," he shared.

Martindell continued to say of the aircraft's recorded flight path: "The perfectly straight line tells me he was using autopilot to fly the plane and whatever point he becomes incapacitated, the autopilot just keeps flying the last thing it was told to do."