National Transportation Safety Board investigators recovered cockpit voice recorder from the main crash site, where a Learjet collided with a busy road in South Florida last week, killing all nine people on board.
Investigators were searching for the plane as part of a broader search of the crash site for more information about what led the plane to crash in Palm Beach County, Florida, on Nov. 1.
Investigators will now try to see if the recorder is working and if any sound was captured.
Although the cockpit voice recorder is one of many pieces of the larger puzzle of what happened, it could provide valuable information about what happened in the final moments before the plane fell from the sky.
The cockpit voice recorder, which may be crucial to the investigation, is being evaluated at the NTSB’s Vehicle Recorder Laboratory in Washington, D.C., the agency said, adding that excavation work at the impact site was now complete.
Investigators of a Philadelphia medevac plane crash in January 2025 managed to recover the plane’s recorder, but determined it had not been working for several years.
Jennifer Homendy, Chairman of the NTSB, reiterated Monday that anyone who found or recovered debris from the crash should contact the agency so they can recover it. “Recovering all available wreckage is essential to the investigation and helps determine the cause of the accident,” she said in an article on X.
The warning comes after investigators found another crucial piece of evidence miles from the crash site: the majority of the plane’s left elevator, the part of the tail that helps pilots control whether the nose tilts up or down. Three of the pieces were found between 1.3 and 3.8 miles from the accident site, said NTSB member Tom Chapman last week.
The distance between where it was found and the crash site shows it broke away before the plane hit the ground, but it’s not yet clear whether that caused the plane to fall or whether a significant force caused the plane to break away, he said.
Weather is also a factor in the NTSB investigation because scattered storms were moving through the area at the time of the crash, officials previously said. One of the pilots told air traffic control in an unconcerned tone that ice was forming on the plane but that it was manageable, and that the turbulence was propelling the craft up and down about 700 feet.
Shortly after this communication, the crew reported precipitation and requested a climb to 37,000 feet, which the controller approved. Less than 30 seconds later, something went wrong and the plane went down. Investigators are looking into whether weather conditions contributed to the crash, they previously said.
Investigators will also examine the plane’s maintenance history, decisions made in the cockpit and by air traffic control as well as pilot procedures.
The NTSB is expected to release a preliminary report in about a month, investigators said last week, but it will take one to two years to determine probable cause, an agency spokesperson told CNN.
This story has been updated with additional information.
Gn headline
