A piece of the Learjet that slammed into the ground in Florida, killing all nine people aboard, was found nearly 4 miles from the crash site, investigators said Tuesday, confirming that the plane was breaking apart before impact.
National Transportation Safety Board member Tom Chapman said most of the left elevator — part of the tail that controls the plane’s pitch — was found in three pieces between 1.3 miles and 3.8 miles from Greenacres, near West Palm Beach, where the jet went down Sunday afternoon.
“What that means exactly, in terms of what caused the aircraft to lose control, or whether the loss of this piece was a result of the forces on the aircraft, we don’t know yet,” Chapman said at a news conference.
Without the elevator intact, the pilot would not have been able to pull the Learjet out of its nosedive, Chapman said.
“At those speeds I don’t know that it would’ve been effective even if it had still been attached to the aircraft, but knowing that it was lost is a very important piece of evidence in terms of pointing us toward other things to investigate,” Chapman said.
The pieces that broke off the plane were probably a byproduct of the nosedive, not the cause, aviation safety expert Jeff Guzzetti told The Associated Press. Their discovery within a few miles of the crash site suggests the elevator components fell off closer to the ground, he said.
“If those parts would have broken off at altitude, those pieces would be a lot farther away,” Guzzetti said.
Victims include a family, a nanny and a longtime aviator
The Learjet 60 took off from Austin, Texas, and was headed for the Bahamas.
The victims included technology entrepreneur Adam Robinson; his wife, Helen Sharp; their two young children, relatives said. The family’s nanny, Ana María Ramírez Cetina, was also killed.
In a joint statement, the families of the passengers killed in the crash said that Cetina cared for the Robinsons’ children, “with tenderness and devotion, and she was truly part of the family.” Cetina, they said, “showed us a legacy of unconditional love and devotion.”
The government in Cetina’s native Colombia said it was providing assistance to her family.
“Her premature departure fills us with sadness,” Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella wrote in Spanish on X. “I send a heartfelt embrace to her family, friends, and loved ones, along with my full solidarity during this difficult time.”
The plane’s captain, Jeff Gregory, 55, lived in Gilbertsville, Montgomery County. He was a longtime aviator, husband, father and devout Christian.
As the plane plunged, a man’s voice could be heard reciting the Lord’s Prayer in the background of the co-pilot’s final radio transmissions to air traffic control. Friends are convinced it was Gregory.
Thomas Noetzel, the director of operations at the company that operated the flight, Upper Jets, organized an online fundraiser to support Gregory’s wife and children.
Gregory was a close personal friend and “knowing him has made me a better person,” Noetzel wrote on the fundraising website GoFundMe.
“Jeff was a devoted, conscientious, and deeply faithful man who had a genuine passion for flying and a strong love for the Lord,” Noetzel’s father, Walter, posted on Facebook.
Co-pilot radioed and texted about ice and turbulence
The Learjet hit the ground with enough force to create a crater before bursting into flames. About 600 nearby residents remain displaced, but only one person on the ground was reported injured.
Investigators have been scouring the area for wreckage, collecting dashcam video and speaking to witnesses. After days of heavy rain, they plan to access the crater on Wednesday and expect to find critical components of the plane.
Chapman reasserted Tuesday that weather was a focus of the investigation.
Co-pilot Nathalia Gadelha Filgueiras’ stepfather, Thiago Corteleti, told the New York Post that she texted her boyfriend about 10 minutes before the crash, telling him: “I’ve got turbulence, I’ve got ice.”
In the last two minutes of the flight, Filgueiras shifted from calmly communicating with air traffic controllers to calling out terrifying updates as the plane plummeted.
She told them ice was accumulating on the plane and that turbulence had thrown it up and down by more than 700 feet (210 meters).
“We’re going to crash into the ground,” she said, as the jet descended at a rate of more than 20,000 feet (6,100 meters) per minute. And then, before the transmission cuts off: “We’re out of time!”
A preliminary NTSB report will be released in about a month, but it will likely take more than a year to determine the probable cause of the crash.
