US air safety investigators said there are early indications the Learjet 60 that crashed in Palm Beach, Florida, on Sunday had broken up before impacting the ground, killing all nine people on board and injuring at least one person on the ground.
Adverse weather conditions are also a major focus of the investigation, National Transportation Safety Board Member Tom Chapman told reporters in Florida on Monday.
Chapman said the pilots reported experiencing moderate turbulence and icing to air traffic controllers. The pilots then asked to climb, before beginning a rapid descent and transmitting over the radio the aircraft was in an “overspeed condition,” he said.
The NTSB is still seeking to determine whether the aircraft’s horizontal stabilizer had come off before the crash, as was indicated by some social media posts.
“We’re going to crash into the ground,” an unidentified pilot can be heard telling controllers shortly after, according to an audio recording posted online by Liveatc.net, a network that broadcasts live and archived air traffic control radio communications.
The last transmission before the aircraft crashed into the ground was the pilot saying they were “out of time.”
Authorities haven’t confirmed the victims’ identities. A statement issued by a public relations firm on behalf of the families said technology entrepreneur Adam Robinson, his wife, Helen Sharp, and their children, ages 4 and 2, were among the victims.
The children’s caretaker, Anita Maria Cetina, as well as Rachael Reed and Charmi Fehr, were also passengers, the joint statement said.
Weather at the nearby Palm Beach airport at the time of the crash indicated gusting winds, rain and low clouds.
“You all saw what the weather was like here at the surface,” Chapman said. “What we have to determine is what the weather conditions were like at altitude.”
The Learjet flew for approximately two hours after leaving Austin for the Bahamas and began its rapid descent around 12:48 p.m. local time on Sunday, according to preliminary data from Flightradar24. The data indicates the plane’s vertical descent rate eventually exceeded 32,000 feet per minute. Dashboard camera footage showed an almost vertical plunge before the impact and explosion alongside a highway.
The NTSB said it was aware of one person on the ground who sustained a leg injury while driving a vehicle near the impact site.
Chapman confirmed the aircraft was operated by Aurora Aviation Inc., doing business as Upper Jets. Attempts to reach representatives for Upper Jets were unsuccessful.
The New York Times interviewed a woman, who said she was the mother of one of the pilots of the aircraft — a 20-year-old named Nathalia Filgueiras. According to the report, Filgueiras earned a pilot’s license at 17 and had logged more than 1,300 hours of flight time.
A Threads account belonging to a Nathalia Gadelha Filgueiras includes a post from March in which she’s posing from inside a Learjet 60, with the caption referencing her as pilot in command.
Following the crash, some people took to social media to speculate about how the pilot’s unconfirmed age, race, gender or experience could have contributed to the accident.
In a social media post to his personal X account, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman defended the pilot, writing that “she was doing her job, communicating with ATC right to the end in a terrifying situation.”
Topics Florida
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