CEO's scientist best friend, 67, made unthinkable move as he came in to land small plane
Tsotne Javakhishvili was operating a 2014 Cessna T240 Corvalis TTx owned by world-renowned American scientist Peter Schultz when it disappeared on Sunday.
National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) officials described the incident to the Daily Mail as a 'presumed crash' and confirmed that nobody else was on board.
The single-engine plane departed Ramona Airport in San Diego County and headed for Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport, which is less than 30 miles away.
Officials said Javakhishvili checked in with the destination runway's control tower for touchdown and was cleared to land at 1.55pm - but he never replied to controllers.
Instead, the four-seater plane veered west for several minutes and plunged into the Pacific Ocean about 470 miles off the coast of San Diego.
Javakhishvili is still missing and the plane has not yet been found.
NTSB and Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) officials told the Daily Mail they are investigating the cause of the crash.
FlightAware tracking website shows the path of the plane as it continued way off course before disappearing from the radar.
Officials shared the plane's registration number, which matches the four-seater aircraft owned by scientist Peter Schultz.
Schultz is a world-leading scientist and the CEO of Scripps Research, a medical and scientific institution based in La Jolla, California.
'Widely considered one of the top chemists in the world, he has made many seminal contributions to the field, including the development and application of methods to expand the genetic code of living organisms, the discovery of catalytic antibodies, and the development and application of molecular diversity technologies to address problems in chemistry, biology and medicine,' Schultz's biography reads.
Javakhishvili was the founder and director of the Institute of Synthetic Biology at the University of Georgia in the European country's capital city of Tbilisi.
He was also the director of Molecular Biology at California biotechnology company Ambrx, according to his LinkedIn page, which says he specialized in genomics.
The University of Georgia confirmed Javakhishvili's death in a Facebook post.
'With a heavy heart, we are following the search works of our colleague, founder and director of the Institute of Synthetic Biology at the University of Georgia, Tsotne Javakhishvili, three days ago, in America,' the university said on Wednesday.
'Our full support goes out to his family, friends, students and colleagues during this uncertain and difficult time.
'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.'
David Gvalia, a friend and former colleague of the pilot, said he was still in shock after hearing the news.
'I would call him my best friend,' he told ABC News affiliate KGTV. 'I'm numb, completely numb... it's devastating. I still can't believe it.'
'Everybody loved him. Everybody respected him. He was larger than life, extremely smart and extremely kind,' Gvalia added.
'His exit from his life is poetic for numerous reasons because, as hard as it is for me to accept it, he died doing the thing he loved doing,'
Schultz confirmed that Javakhishvili was his friend and an experienced aviator. The duo worked on several scientific projects together.
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