Learjet may have disintegrated before fatal crash in Florida, NTSB says

(Bloomberg) — U.S. aviation safety investigators say there are initial indications that the Learjet 60 that crashed in Palm Beach, Florida on Sunday broke up before impact, killing all nine people on board and injuring at least one person on the ground.

“We’re still trying to figure that out,” National Transportation Safety Board member Tom Chapman told reporters in Florida on Monday when asked if the plane’s horizontal stabilizer had come loose before it crashed, as some social media posts suggested.

Adverse weather conditions are also a major focus of the investigation, Chapman added. He said pilots reported mild turbulence and icing to air traffic controllers. The pilots then asked to climb before beginning a rapid descent, radioing that the plane was in an “excessive speed state,” he said.

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The cause has not been determined. The NTSB is investigating, with areas of focus including severe weather, including reported turbulence and icing.

The NTSB said there were initial indications that the plane may have disintegrated before impact. Investigators were still working to determine if parts such as the horizontal stabilizer had come loose before.

The pilots reported slight turbulence and icing and requested a climb. Investigators said they still need to determine the weather conditions at the height of the plane.

After flying from Austin to the Bahamas, the plane began to descend rapidly and the pilot reported an overspeed condition. The last transmission contained the words “out of time” before the plane crashed near Palm Beach.

All nine people aboard the Learjet were killed. The NTSB also said one person on the ground suffered a leg injury.

“We’re going to hit the ground,” the unidentified pilot can be heard telling controllers shortly afterward, according to an audio recording posted online by Liveatc.net, which broadcasts live and archived air traffic control radio communications.

The last transmission before the plane hit the ground was that the pilot said “time is not up”.

The weather at nearby Palm Beach Airport at the time of the crash indicated gusty winds, rain and low clouds.

“You all saw what the weather was like here on the surface,” Chapman said. “We need to find out what the weather conditions were like at altitude.

The Learjet flew approximately two hours after departing Austin for the Bahamas and began its rapid descent at around 12:48 a.m. local time on Sunday, according to preliminary data from Flightradar24. Data indicate that the aircraft’s vertical descent rate eventually exceeded 32,000 feet per minute. Dash cam footage showed a nearly vertical drop before the impact and explosion along the highway.

The NTSB said it is aware of one person on the ground who suffered a leg injury while driving a vehicle near the crash site.

Chapman confirmed that the plane was operated by Aurora Aviation Inc., doing business as Upper Jets. Attempts to reach a representative for Upper Jets were unsuccessful.

The New York Times interviewed a woman who said she was the mother of one of the plane’s pilots — 20-year-old Nathalie Filgueiras. According to the report, Filgueiras obtained his pilot’s license at age 17 and had more than 1,300 hours of flight time.

The Threads account belonging to Nathalia Gadelha Filgueiras has a post from March in which she poses from inside a Learjet 60, with a caption referring to her as the pilot-in-command.

After the crash, some people began to speculate on social media about how the pilot’s unconfirmed age, race, gender or experience might have contributed to the accident.

In a social media post on his personal X account, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman defended the pilot, writing that she “did her job and communicated with ATC until the end in a terrifying situation.”

Flight training is usually an arduous and expensive process as prospective pilots pursue a so-called type rating, an airframe-specific certification that is legally required to fly any jet aircraft. Although a pilot can obtain an initial rating in the US at age 17, it usually takes years to complete the additional qualifications and prerequisites required to obtain a first type rating.

And even when candidates meet the legal minimums, the hot job market for pilots has made jet careers fiercely competitive, with employers demanding even more hours and experience.

Local emergency responders and officials declined to comment on the victims’ identities, and Palm Beach County Deputy Administrator Tom Nadler said there is DNA that needs to be compared before the victims can be definitively identified.

Officials said about 400 people have been displaced near the crash site and the local government is working to temporarily relocate all those affected.

–With assistance from Matthew Griffin and Mathieu Dion.

(Updated with additional air traffic sound from paragraph 4 and NASA administrator’s post in paragraph 14.)

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