NTSB: The Palm Beach Learjet Began Breaking Up Before It Hit the Ground; Families Name the Passengers
Federal investigators said Monday they have evidence the Learjet 60 that crashed in Palm Beach County on Sunday, killing all nine people aboard, started coming apart before impact — and that parts of the jet may lie well beyond the crash site. The passengers' families, in a joint statement, named the seven people who were flying to the Bahamas.
The investigation into Sunday's Palm Beach County jet crash turned on a single sentence Monday. 'We do have some evidence that there was some breakup of the aircraft before impact,' National Transportation Safety Board member Thomas Chapman told reporters, adding that investigators may find parts of the Learjet 60 some distance from the impact site. The jet, flying from Austin, Texas, to North Eleuthera Airport in the Bahamas, crashed at about 12:50 p.m. Sunday less than 10 miles from Mar-a-Lago, killing all nine people aboard; a man on the ground suffered a leg injury. Officials have not determined a cause, and the NTSB declined to speculate about what brought the plane down.
The final minutes, as Chapman laid them out, were a fight with the sky itself. The crew reported managing ice and moderate turbulence, asked to climb 2,000 feet, and then declared an emergency as the jet fell — 10,000 feet a minute, then 20,000, with flight-tracking data at one point showing more than 32,000. Weather is 'a major concern of the investigation,' Chapman said. A cockpit voice recorder was installed on the aircraft at some point, records indicate, but investigators do not yet know whether it was still on board: 'We're very hopeful that we can recover it,' Chapman said. On the ground, the crash left a massive debris field, sparked multiple fires, forced about 600 people to evacuate — some 77 mobile homes among them — and left water standing in the impact crater, slowing the recovery of the wreckage itself.
By Monday evening the families of the passengers had named their dead in a joint statement, even as the Palm Beach County Medical Examiner's Office said it had not yet officially identified the victims. The families identified the passengers as Adam Robinson, 45; his wife, Helen Sharp, 40; their children, Charlie, 4, and Emma, 2; the children's nanny, Anita Maria Cetina; and another couple, Rachael Reed and Charmi Fehr. Family members have also identified the copilot as Nathalia Filgueiras, 20, who had earned her pilot's license at 17 and logged more than 1,300 hours. 'We are deeply grateful to the first responders, investigators, and the Palm Beach County community for their care,' the families said. 'Our hearts are also with the families of the pilots, who are grieving alongside us.'
