image source, Reuters
A private jet that crashed into a South Florida neighborhood at high speed claimed the lives of all nine people on board Sunday afternoon.
Images recorded by nearby cameras recorded the dramatic moment in which the Learjet 60 aircraft hits the ground on a street in Greenacres, in the Palm Beach metropolitan area.
The impact was so severe that it caused a crater and caused the twin-engine plane to disintegrate into thousands of small fragments.
On the ground, a person who was in a vehicle was injured in the leg, but there were no other victims beyond the passengers of the plane, according to initial investigations.
"The biggest obstacle we are going to have is recovering the main remains in the impact crater on the street," Timothy Monville, investigator in charge of the case for the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), said this Monday at a press conference.
The agency's spokesman, Thomas Chapman, reported that they began an investigation into what happened and warned that the authorities cannot speculate on the causes that led to the crash of the aircraft.
But he said the Learjet 60 may have suffered a problem and suffered "some disintegration" before crashing on Greenacres Street.
This is what the NTSB made public this Monday.
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What happened before the fall?
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The private flight was operated by the Upper Jets company with a 22-year-old Learjet 60 aircraft.
It departed at 9:37 a.m. on Sunday from the international airport in the city of Austin, Texas, and was destined for the airport in North Eleuthera, a tourist island in the Bahamas.
Seven passengers and two crew members were traveling, whose identities were not revealed by NTSB authorities. However, the mother of the pilot Nathalia Gadelha confirmed that the 20-year-old girl died in the accident.
The flight found itself in the Florida peninsula with difficult weather conditions, since since the morning there were rains with electrical activity and unstable bands of cloudiness.
Chapman explained that at 12:00, the aircraft reported to air traffic control that it had encountered "light clear ice, which was manageable" and "moderate turbulence."
They were flying at a regular cruising altitude of 35,000 feet (10,668 m), but unstable weather caused them to vary their altitude by about 700 feet (213 m).
The temperature they reported at that altitude was -47 °C, a key aspect for future investigations because these conditions generate icing that is risky for aircraft.
The pilots then requested a climb to 37,000 feet to avoid the rain.
"Less than 30 seconds later, a transmission from the aircraft announced the descent followed by a distress call," Chapman said.
At 12:48, the plane transmitted to the controller: "We are in an overspeed condition on descent...", with the rest of the message unintelligible.
He further described that the plane was descending rapidly and they reported the altitude. Audio recordings of the communications show how dramatic the situation the pilots were trying to control was.
However, the aircraft was never able to recover from the uncontrolled descent and crashed at high speed in the Palm Beach area.
"Sadly, everyone on board lost their lives," Chapman said, expressing his condolences to the families of the victims.
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What happened next?
The strong impact caused a crater at the specific point of impact, but Chapman and Monville reported that there were small fragments of the aircraft within a radius of about 750 meters.
The first investigations found these remains in baseball fields, businesses and private residences.
"The debris is quite small," Chapman said.
In the place there was a field of semi-fixed houses where about 600 people lived.
Some shared videos of small pieces of metal and fragments of aircraft equipment that were scattered everywhere and hit vehicles and homes.
Monville reiterated that, for researchers, one of the "biggest obstacles" is to rescue what is left in the crater, since it filled with water when a pipe that passed underground broke.
Asked whether the aircraft lost its horizontal stabilizer in flight, as allegedly seen on video before impact, Chapman said: "It's possible. We have some evidence that the aircraft suffered some disintegration before impact. We're still trying to determine that."
"We could find parts of the aircraft at some distance from the impact site," he added.
Amazingly, only one person in a car near the point of impact suffered a leg injury.
"These are the first steps in a long investigation process," Chapman told reporters, who insisted on knowing the possible causes of the accident.
The official reiterated that there would be no speculation.
They also refused to answer whether the young pilot Nathalia Gadelha was in command of the controls, or if she was only monitoring and in charge of communications, as heard in the audios with the air traffic controllers in the area.
Image source, @itsnatfilg/Threads
Bad weather "definitely was a factor"
What it did address in part was the aspect of the weather conditions that existed in the minutes prior to the incident.
The official indicated that the reported turbulence "was certainly a factor" at play for the aircraft's transit over Florida.
"What we have to determine is what the weather conditions were like at 35,000 feet altitude," he said, explaining that they are doing the relevant investigations.
NTSB experts will be doing the necessary interviews to find out "who knew what, when and what actions were taken, and whether those actions were appropriate" for the navigation of the flight over the bad weather at that time in Florida.
Officials said they have not yet found the plane's recorder in the rubble, which would be key to having detailed information about what was happening before the tragic incident.
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