Federal investigators said Monday that the private jet that slammed into a busy Palm Beach County road on Sunday, killing all nine people aboard, may have been breaking up before it hit the ground. Debris landed across sports fields, businesses and homes.
The Learjet 60 came down on Military Trail, a six-lane road lined with businesses and restaurants, near a mobile home park in Greenacres. It exploded on impact and left a large crater in the street. No one on the ground was killed, though one man suffered a leg injury.
People nearby described the force of the impact. One driver, Aki Kuusisto, said he heard a whistle and then a boom he could feel inside his car, while other residents said their homes shook and their lights flickered.
Like driving down the road, we heard the whistle and the boom and you could feel it in the car, it was that close.
Aki Kuusisto, witness
Tom Chapman, the National Transportation Safety Board member leading a team of about 20 investigators, said pulling wreckage from the crater will be a daunting challenge given the speed of the impact. Pieces of the plane may turn up some distance from the main site, and on-site work is expected to last several days.
What the crew reported
Weather will be a major focus of the inquiry, Chapman said. Severe thunderstorms swept south Florida on Sunday, briefly closing Miami International Airport and forcing commercial flights to divert.
You all saw what the weather was like here at the surface. What we have to determine is what the weather conditions were like at altitude,
Tom Chapman, NTSB board member
According to the NTSB, the crew told air traffic controllers at 35,000 feet that they were encountering light, clear ice and moderate turbulence, with an outside temperature of minus 47 Celsius. They then reported picking up precipitation and asked to climb to 37,000 feet, which controllers approved.
Less than 30 seconds later, the plane announced a descent and issued a mayday call. At about 12:48 p.m., the crew reported an overspeed condition. The jet crashed at 12:51 p.m.
In the audio, a crew member reported descending at 20,000 feet per minute and warned that the plane would crash into the ground. The last data broadcast showed the jet near 9,000 feet before it nosedived at more than 32,000 feet per minute, roughly 363 mph.
The NTSB said determining a probable cause will be a lengthy process. Officials are trying to learn whether a cockpit voice recorder was aboard and can be recovered, and the board is working with the Federal Aviation Administration, Learjet representatives, meteorologists and air traffic control experts.
Who was aboard
The jet left Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in Texas at about 10:37 a.m., bound for North Eleuthera in the Bahamas. It went down nine miles from President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort; Trump had flown out of a nearby airport on Air Force One about an hour earlier.
The seven passengers, identified by their families, were Austin technology entrepreneur Adam Robinson, 45; his wife, public relations firm owner Helen Sharp, 40; their children Emma, 4, and Charlie, 2; family friends Rachael Reed and Charmi Fehr; and the children's nanny, Anita Maria Cetina. Robinson was CEO and co-founder of Retention.com.
The co-pilot was Nathalia Filgueiras, 20, of Palm Beach County, who earned her private pilot's license at 17 and worked for Upper Jets, the Fort Lauderdale charter firm that owned the aircraft, her mother said. The captain has been identified as Jeff Gregory, 55, an experienced pilot from Pennsylvania.
Upper Jets director of operations Thomas Noetzel offered condolences and said the company is cooperating with authorities, referring questions to federal investigators. Gov. Ron DeSantis said the jet looked like a missile going down, and the Catholic Diocese of Palm Beach dedicated an All Souls' Day Mass on Monday to the nine victims.
