The Jet That Left Austin Broke Up in the Air: Investigators Say Parts Came Off Before the Florida Crash That Killed Nine
The National Transportation Safety Board said Monday that a Learjet 60 that took off from Austin on Sunday, bound for the Bahamas, likely started breaking apart before it crashed near West Palm Beach — after turbulence and icing at cruising altitude, on a flight that killed all nine people aboard.
A business jet that took off from Austin, Texas, on Sunday likely started to break up in the air before it crashed in South Florida, killing nine people, a National Transportation Safety Board member said Monday.
NTSB member Tom Chapman said evidence found at the crash site indicates the aircraft started to break up in the air, with parts of the jet likely breaking off before the crash in Greenacres, near West Palm Beach. The tragedy, Chapman said, started earlier: the plane encountered turbulence and icing at its cruising altitude, rain pounded the region on Sunday, and one of the pilots reported ice conditions at a high altitude. The weather will be a major focus of the investigation, he said.
The Learjet 60 was flying from Austin to the Bahamas. Authorities say there were no survivors.
Among the nine victims, the Associated Press reported, was the flight's copilot, Nathalia Gadelha Filgueiras, who was 20 years old and had earned her pilot's license while still in high school, according to her mother. The crash also killed Adam Robinson, the founder of Retention.com, his wife and their two children.
The investigation is at its beginning: an in-air breakup finding redirects the work toward what the aircraft met at altitude — the turbulence and icing Chapman described — and toward the debris field, where parts found far from the main site are the physical evidence of a jet coming apart before it reached the ground. For Texas, the story starts at an Austin departure ramp on Sunday, on a routine business flight to the Bahamas that never arrived.
