‘Responsible, hardworking’ 20-year-old co-pilot among 9 killed when Learjet nosedived into a road

By Holly Yan, Aaron Cooper, Alexandra Skores, Pete Muntean, CNN

(CNN) — In the blink of an eye, a private jet plummeting 450 feet per second nosedived into a Florida roadway, bursting into flames and killing all nine people on board.

“It was a cataclysmic plane crash,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said. “It looked like a missile going down.”

The Learjet 60 was traveling from Austin, Texas, to the Bahamas on Sunday when it plunged from the sky, leaving a massive crater near passing cars in Palm Beach County, Florida. No injuries were reported from the ground.

Authorities have not identified the nine people on board who were killed. But the family of 20-year-old Nathalia Gadelha Filgueiras identified her as the plane’s co-pilot.

“She was a very good girl – responsible, hardworking,” her mother, Camila Gadelha Corteleti, told CNN Brasil. “She was the co-pilot and couldn’t make any decisions.”

The family is Brazilian but lives in Florida, where Filgueiras was born, Corteleti said.

The National Transportation Safety Board, which will try to determine the cause of the crash, said investigators face significant challenges in piecing together what happened.

“The biggest obstacle that we’re going to have is recovering the major wreckage from the impacted crater on the roadway,” NTSB Senior Air Safety Investigator Tim Monville said.

In addition, “we do have some evidence that there was some breakup of the aircraft before impact. We’re still seeking to determine that,” NTSB Member Tom Chapman said. “We may find some parts of the aircraft some distance from the crash site.”

While the cause of the tragedy remains unknown, air traffic radio captured a pilot’s voice as the plane plunged straight toward the ground.

‘We’re going to crash into the ground!’

Before the crash, the pilot calmly reported ice accumulating on the aircraft, with an outside air temperature of -47 degrees Celsius (-52 degrees Fahrenheit), as well as moderate turbulence that bounced the plane by up to 700 feet, according to a recording of air traffic control radio calls captured by LiveATC.net.

But moments later, the pilot shouted, “Mayday, mayday!” in an increasingly panicked voice.

“We’re descending 10,000 feet per minute!” the pilot told the Miami Air Route Traffic Control Center.

“We are in an overspeed condition descending 20,000 feet per minute,” they yelled. “We’re going to crash into the ground!”

In reality, the jet plummeted 27,000 feet in one minute, just before flight tracking data was cut off, the website ADS-B Exchange shows.

How ice can accumulate on planes in the sky

The weather conditions are a major focus of the investigation, Chapman said. “What we have to determine is what the weather conditions were like at altitude. They were at about 35,000 feet,” the NTSB official said.

There were scattered storms in the area of the crash, and the plane passed through a stronger storm cell a few minutes before it started plummeting. It is unclear if the storm contributed to the crash.

During the flight, the pilot reported icing, which is one of the biggest weather hazards in aviation.

Icing can cause an increase in weight, a reduction in lift, a decrease in thrust and an increase in drag, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. In other words, icing can slow an aircraft or force it downward.

All clouds at heights where temperatures dip below freezing have the potential to create icing conditions, according to the FAA.

While icing happens more frequently in the winter, it can happen at any time of the year. Even in warm weather, thunderstorms generate powerful updrafts, or columns of rising air that cool rapidly.

The higher the altitude, the colder the air gets. And temperatures in these updrafts can drop to as low as -100 degrees Fahrenheit at the altitudes where planes fly.

Planes are equipped with strong anti-ice systems. But in some cases, the system cannot keep up with the icing.

Ice can “make managing the airplane’s flightpath and airspeed more difficult and can prevent the airplane from maintaining level flight,” the NTSB said.

Ice on wings and other surfaces can pose a major threat to private jets. In January 2024, the NTSB published a safety alert emphasizing the risks of in-flight icing conditions, which can cause pilots to lose control.

Co-pilot earned her pilot’s license before her driver’s license

Filgueiras received her pilot’s license at age 17, before she even got her driver’s license, her stepfather Thiago Corteleti told CNN Brasil.

The young pilot graduated from American Flyers, one of the most prestigious aviation schools in the United States and had already accumulated more than 1,300 flight hours, her family said.

No details have been released about the other pilot on board.

‘I heard and felt the boom’

The plane hit the ground shortly before 1 p.m. on Military Trail, a major thoroughfare between Cresthaven Boulevard and 10th Avenue North, the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office said. The roadway was left shattered and burning wreckage dotted the crater, video from CNN affiliate WPBF showed.

“There is a lot of debris that was strewn as a result of this crash,” DeSantis said.

The scene is just miles from the airport in West Palm Beach that was recently renamed for President Donald Trump and his Mar-a-Lago resort.

About 600 people are in need of shelter because the damage on the ground is blocking the entrance to a mobile home park, said Joel Flores, Palm Beach County commissioner for District 3, who was the first county official at the scene. Residents are being sent to two shelters in the county while the site is being investigated, he said.

“I heard and felt the boom,” Andrew Mannino told CNN. “The power immediately went out and is still out.”

Mannino said he smelled the smoke and saw a large black cloud in the sky.

Sunday’s crash marked the second deadliest plane crash in the US this year, according to NTSB records. In June, 12 people died when a skydiving plane crashed in Butler, Missouri.

The catastrophe is also the deadliest crash involving a Learjet 60, according to data from the Flight Safety Foundation. In 2008, four people were killed when a Learjet 60 bound for Los Angeles crashed on takeoff from Columbia, South Carolina.

Flight data recorder might have been destroyed

Dashcam video showing the crash will be important to investigators piecing together what happened, said Mary Schiavo, CNN aviation analyst and former inspector general for the Department of Transportation.

“That is not a controlled descent,” Schiavo told CNN’s Fredricka Whitfield Sunday. “It’s clear, whatever happened, they had lost control of the plane.”

The steep descent could have forced parts of the plane to break off and the flight data recorder could have been destroyed in the explosion, she added.

It’s not clear if the plane had a cockpit voice recorder on board, but FAA regulations require jet aircraft with more than one engine to carry a voice recorder if they are flown for hire.

The plane is registered to an LLC in Delaware, according to FAA records, and is listed as available for charter online.

The NTSB is expected to release a preliminary report within 30 days of the crash. A final report, including the probable causes of the crash, could take one to two years to complete.

CNN Brasil’s Mariana Catacci and CNN’s Cindy von Quednow, Angela Fritz and Ronnie Glassberg contributed to this report.

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