Florida plane crash: Learjet showed signs of midair breakup before impact, NTSB says

West Palm Beach, Nov 3 (AP): A business jet that crashed in South Florida with nine people aboard, including a family with two young children, likely started breaking apart before it slammed into the ground and erupted in a fireball, a federal investigator said Monday.

NTSB member Tom Chapman said during a news conference Monday that investigators found evidence the aircraft started breaking up before it hit the ground. (Aki Kuusisto via REUTERS)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. The victims included 20-year-old co-pilot Nathalia Gadelha Filgueiras, as well as technology entrepreneur Adam Robinson, his wife, Helen Sharp, and their two young children, relatives said.

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.

Jeff Guzzetti, a former investigator for the NTSB and the Federal Aviation Administration, said key components of the jet's tail may have been lost during the turbulence or as it nose-dived, making the plane impossible to control.

"That very well could explain the missile-like profile just before it hit the ground," he said. At the time of the crash, there was an FAA warning out to pilots in the area about nearly-stationary thunderstorms with cloud tops reaching all the way up to 45,000 feet, according to AccuWeather.

Pilots are trained to avoid thunderstorms, if possible, for safety. Typically, precipitation at that altitude and temperature comes in the form of ice crystals that simply go around the plane, he said. "Those are all really big red flags to me," he said.

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." The jet began its journey at the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in Texas with two crew and seven passengers, Chapman said.

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. The identity of the other pilot was not immediately disclosed.

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. The plane was heading east when the pilot started to report problems. According to air traffic control recordings captured by LiveATC.net, the pilot said ice was accumulating on the jet and that turbulence was jolting it by as much as 700 feet (210 meters).