WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Parts of a business jet likely started to break off even before it slammed into the ground and erupted in a ball of flames in South Florida, killing all nine people on board, a federal investigator said Monday.
Video recorded by passersby captured the Bahamas-bound Learjet’s rapid nosedive Sunday afternoon before it exploded in Greenacres, about 7 miles (11 kilometers) southwest of West Palm Beach. Flames flickered around chunks of pavement lining the crater as shocked residents looked on in horror. Thick black smoke engulfed the crash site and little remained of the plane.
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“Debris was everywhere. Debris hit my house. Everything was on fire. The road was on fire,” Anthony Blackmon, who lives near the crash site, told NBC affiliate WTVJ. “I’ve always seen it on the news, never thought it would happen so close to somebody like how it happened today.”
Federal investigators outline the probe but decline to speculate
National Transportation Safety Board member Tom Chapman said during a news conference Monday that investigators found evidence the aircraft started breaking up before it hit the ground and that debris from the aircraft could be spread far and wide.
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“We do have some indication that the aircraft was breaking up before impact,” Chapman said. “We may find parts of the aircraft some distance away from the actual impact site.”
Aviation safety expert Jeff Guzzetti said key components of the jet’s tail may have been lost during the turbulence or as it nose-dived.
“If that happens you cannot control an airplane at that point. And that very well could explain the missile-like profile just before it hit the ground,” said Guzzetti, a former NTSB and the Federal Aviation Administration investigator.
Weather conditions will be a major focus of the investigation, Chapman said. Rain pounded the region on Sunday, and one of the pilots reported icing conditions at a high altitude in communications with air traffic control.
Weather radar maps from the time of the crash that FlightRadar24 combined with the plane’s flight path seem to show it flying directly into a storm cell that was rapidly expanding upward. But Chapman said investigators still have to determine what the weather conditions were at 35,000 feet.
Chapman said the plane was originally equipped with a cockpit voice recorder that investigators hope to recover.
“We have a lot of work to do on scene,” NTSB investigator Timothy Monville said at the news conference. “This will be a several-day process, and the biggest obstacle that we’re going to have is recovering the major wreckage from the impacted crater on the roadway.”
Mother identifies one of the pilots
The jet began its journey at the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in Texas with two crew and seven passengers, Chapman said. Authorities have not released the names of the people who died and the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office declined to discuss the death investigation, which is ongoing.
Camila Corteleti told the New York Post and New York Times that her daughter, 20-year-old Nathalia Gadelha Filgueiras, was one of the pilots. She earned her pilot’s license in 2023 while a 17-year-old senior at West Boca Raton Community High School in Florida, local news reports said at the time.
Her pilot’s license showed she had the rating to fly that model of Learjet but not to be in command of the flight.
Her father, Allan Filgueiras, told The Associated Press he wasn’t prepared to speak about the crash.
A man who was driving close to the scene as the plane crashed suffered leg wounds, Monville said, but he didn’t know the extent of the injury.
Palm Beach County Mayor Sara Baxter asked for sympathy for the crash victims.
“Please keep them in your thoughts and prayers,” Baxter said.
Pilot reported turbulence and ice, then the jet fell rapidly
Police work near the scene of a plane crash in Greenacres, Florida, on Monday. Photo by Rebecca Blackwell/AP
The plane was heading east at 35,000 feet (11,000 meters) when the pilot started to report problems.
The pilot said ice was accumulating on the jet and that turbulence was jolting it by as much as 700 feet (210 meters), according to air traffic control recordings captured by LiveATC.net.
“We have light, clear ice that is manageable and moderate turbulence,” the pilot told controllers.
The situation rapidly deteriorated.
The pilot requested permission to climb another 2,000 feet (610 meters) and then quickly declared an emergency as the jet lost altitude at an alarming rate.
“We’re descending 8,000 — mayday, mayday — we’re descending 10,000 feet per minute,” the pilot radioed.
“We are in an overspeed condition descending 20,000 feet per minute,” the pilot radioed. Moments later, the pilot said: “We’re going to crash into the ground.”
Video shows the plane banking sharply to the right before crashing and exploding.
Some area residents are still not allowed to return home
Palm Beach County Commissioner Joel G. Flores said at the news conference that the county “doesn’t have a clue” when residents who live near the crash site will be able to return to their homes as investigators continue to comb the area.
A shelter has been established for the residents of almost 80 mobile homes near the crash site, Flores said.
“Our concern right now is clearing the scene so that our residents can get back to normal,” he said. “We don’t really have a timeline as to when they are going to be able to comb through all the evidence and do everything they need to do, and that leaves our community looking for answers.”
Funk reported from Omaha, Nebraska. Associated Press writers Amy Taxin in Santa Ana, California; Dave Collins in Hartford, Connecticut; and Philip Marcelo in East Meadow, New York, contributed.
