A piece of the Learjet that crashed to the ground in Florida, killing all nine people on board, was found nearly 6 kilometers from the crash site, investigators said Tuesday, confirming that the plane broke apart before impact.
Tom Chapman, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board, 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 plane crashed Sunday afternoon.
“Exactly what that means, as to what caused the airplane to lose control, or whether the loss of that part was a result of the forces exerted on the airplane, 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 dive, Chapman said.
“At those speeds, I don’t know if it would have been effective even if it had still been attached to the plane, but knowing that it was lost is a very important piece of evidence that directs us to other things to investigate,” Chapman said.
The pieces that broke off the plane were likely a byproduct of the fall, not the cause, aviation safety expert Jeff Guzzetti told The Associated Press. Their discovery a few kilometers from the accident site suggests the elevator components fell closer to the ground, he said.
“If these pieces had broken apart at altitude, they would be much further away,” Guzzetti said.
Victims include family, nanny and longtime airman
The Learjet 60 took off from Austin, Texas, and was heading to the Bahamas.
The victims included tech entrepreneur Adam Robinson; his wife, Helen Sharp; and 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 Cetina cared for the Robinsons’ children “with tenderness and devotion, and was truly part of the family.” Cetina, they say, “showed us a legacy of unconditional love and dedication.”
The government in Cetina’s native Colombia said it was providing aid to her family.
“His premature departure fills us with sadness,” Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella wrote in Spanish on X. “I send my sincere kisses to his family, friends and loved ones, as well as all my solidarity during this difficult time.”
The plane’s captain, Jeff Gregory, 55, lived in suburban Philadelphia. 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 that it was Gregory.
Thomas Noetzel, director of operations for 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 made me a better person,” Noetzel wrote on the fundraising site GoFundMe.
“Jeff was a dedicated, conscientious and deeply faithful man who had a true passion for aviation and a great love for the Lord,” Noetzel’s father, Walter, said on Facebook.
The co-pilot radioed and texted about ice and turbulence.
The Learjet hit the ground with enough force to create a crater before catching fire. Around 600 nearby residents are still displaced, but only one person on the ground is believed to have been injured.
Investigators canvassed the area for wreckage, collected dashcam video and spoke to witnesses. After days of heavy rain, they plan to access the crater on Wednesday and hope to find critical components of the plane.
Chapman reiterated Tuesday that the weather was the focus of the investigation.
Co-pilot Nathalia Gadelha Filgueiras’ father-in-law, Thiago Corteleti, told the New York Post that she texted her boyfriend about 10 minutes before the crash, telling him: “I’m having turbulence, I’m having ice.”
During the last two minutes of the flight, Filgueiras went from calm communication with air traffic controllers to terrifying updates as the plane plummeted.
She told them ice was building up on the plane and turbulence had thrown it up and down more than 700 feet.
“We’re going to crash into the ground,” she said as the plane descended at a speed of more than 20,000 feet per minute. And then, before the transmission cuts out: “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.
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