The father of Nathalia Filgueiras, the 20-year-old co-pilot killed with eight others when a Learjet 60 went down in Florida on Sunday, said Friday that her last radio calls to air traffic control show she kept fighting for the plane until the end.
Allan Filgueiras, a pilot who taught his daughter to fly, told a news conference he had replayed the recording many times hoping to find a clue to what went wrong. What he found instead, he said, was a reason to be proud of her.
On the recording, she first calmly reports ice forming on the jet as it flew into a thunderstorm, with turbulence heaving it up and down by 700 feet. Moments later she declares an emergency, telling controllers the aircraft was in an overspeed condition and dropping thousands of feet per minute.
She showed me what it is to be a hero because once you see that coming, a lot of the big boys — military or whatever — they can't handle.
Allan Filgueiras, father of co-pilot Nathalia Filgueiras
The family held the news conference in part to answer online critics who questioned whether someone so young belonged in the cockpit of a high-performance business jet. Attorney Stuart Grossman said the aim was to protect her reputation along with her memory, and he called her fully qualified for the flight despite her age.
Filgueiras had logged more than 1,300 hours and had completed the training needed for a commercial pilot's license and Learjet certification. Gregory, the plane's 55-year-old captain, is thought to have been flying the jet during its final minutes.
Grossman said the family is not accusing anyone and has no immediate plans to sue. He said it will wait for the government's findings, then have its own experts weigh in on them.
The National Transportation Safety Board sent 20 investigators to South Florida, Grossman said. On Thursday, the agency said it had found parts of one of the jet's engines and was still digging out the crater at the crash site in Greenacres.
The cause remains unknown, and the investigation is in its early stages. The jet sped past its design limits as it fell, and pieces of its tail turned up miles from where it hit the ground.
Relatives identified the passengers as technology entrepreneur Adam Robinson, his wife, Helen Sharp, and their children, Emma, 4, and Charlie, 2. The family's nanny was also killed, along with Rachael Reed and Charmi Fehr, families said.
The captain, Jeff Gregory, had previously worked for East Coast Jets, according to April Honnen, the charter company's director.
Filgueiras grew up in a Brazilian household in Boca Raton, and her father first took her flying when she was 12. As a 17-year-old senior at West Boca Raton Community High School, she earned her private pilot's license through a Palm Beach County School District program that paid for her aviation academy training.
John Cox, a retired airline pilot who now leads Safety Operating Systems, said landing the right seat of a Lear 60 meant she had impressed someone, describing the job as a good ride.
