Investigators find jet debris miles from Florida crash site

Pieces of a Learjet that crashed in Florida, killing all nine people aboard, were found as far as 3.8 miles from the impact site, investigators said Tuesday. The scattered debris indicates the aircraft was likely breaking apart before it hit the ground, National Transportation Safety Board member Tom Chapman said.

Investigators found parts of the horizontal tail section more than a mile from the crater, including the jet’s elevator, which had broken into three pieces. The elevator controls whether an aircraft pitches up or down. Without it intact, the pilots could not have pulled the Learjet 60 out of its nosedive, Chapman said, though he questioned whether it would have been effective at the plane’s rate of descent.

“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 towards other things to investigate,” he said.

The jet was traveling from Austin, Texas, to the Bahamas on Sunday when co-pilot Nathalia Gadelha Filgueiras, 20, reported ice accumulating on the aircraft and severe turbulence that sent it up and down by more than 700 feet. The Guardian reported that the plane appeared to have flown into a thunderstorm at 35,000 feet.

Filgueiras told air traffic controllers the aircraft was descending at 8,000 feet per minute, then 10,000 feet per minute, according to The Guardian. In one of her final transmissions, she said: “Declare an emergency 722 Bravo Delta, we are in an overspeed condition descending 20,000ft per minute.” The jet crashed near a trailer park at the intersection of Military Trail and Cresthaven Boulevard in Palm Beach County and erupted in a fireball.

The passengers were Adam Robinson and Helen Sharp, a couple from Austin; their children, Emma, 4, and Charlie, 2; Rachael Reed; Charmi Fehr; and Anita Maria Cetina. The Guardian identified Reed and Fehr as family friends and Cetina as the family’s nanny. The jet’s other pilot was Jeff Gregory, 55, identified by his employer, East Coast Jets, a charter company based in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

“Our prayers go out to Jeff’s family, his fellow crew member, the passengers and everyone affected by this heart breaking tragedy,” the company said in a statement.

CBS News reported that a man’s voice could be heard reciting the Lord’s Prayer in the background as the plane plunged toward the ground. Friends of Gregory told CBS News they were convinced the voice was his.

Chapman said weather would be a key focus of the NTSB investigation. He urged people in the area not to disturb anything that might be aircraft debris and to contact investigators or local authorities instead. Investigators plan to lay out recovered pieces to help reconstruct the jet. A preliminary report describing what happened will be released in about a month, according to The Guardian; determining the exact cause will likely take more than a year.