“I’m experiencing turbulence, there’s frost.” Here is the last message that Nathalia Gadelha Filgueiras would have sent to her boyfriend Justin, barely ten minutes before the crash of the Learjet 60 which killed nine people on Sunday in Florida, according to her father-in-law, cited by the “New York Post”.
Weather conditions will be a “major” element of the investigation into the causes of the accident, an official from the US Federal Transportation Safety Agency (NTSB) said on Monday.
At a news conference in West Palm Beach, NTSB board member Tom Chapman recounted the plane’s final hours. The jet took off from Austin, Texas, at 10:37 a.m. bound for North Eleuthera, Bahamas. It carried two crew members – a captain and a co-pilot – and seven passengers.
Several relatives identified the co-pilot to American media as Nathalia Gadelha Filgueiras, 20, from Florida. She obtained her pilot’s license at 17, before her driving license, and had accumulated around 1,300 hours of flight time. She had been working for an airplane rental company for about nine months.
“I knew a plane was going to take it away from me. I always knew it, but I was so proud of her. I know she was living her dream.”
Investigators have not yet determined who was in charge at the time of the tragedy.
“We are going to crash to the ground”
Tom Chapman confirmed the content of the latest exchanges between the cockpit and the control tower. A female voice calmly reports “moderate turbulence” and frost, before asking permission to gain altitude.
“Mayday, mayday, we are descending at 10,000 feet per minute,” we can then hear. The situation deteriorated quickly: the co-pilot reported overspeed and a descent to 20,000 feet per minute. A few moments later, the same voice says: “We are going to crash to the ground”, before a scream and the abrupt interruption of communications at 12:50 p.m. (6:50 p.m. in Switzerland).
The plane crashed steeply on the side of a busy road, leaving a deep crater. A motorist was also reported to have injured his leg.
A tech entrepreneur and his family among the victims
According to TMZ and the New York Post, the seven passengers were tech entrepreneur Adam Robinson, 44, his wife Helen and their children Emma, 4, and Charlie, 2, as well as two family friends, Rachael Reed and Charmi Fehr, and their nanny, Anita Maria Apellido Cetina. However, the authorities had not yet officially confirmed the identity of the victims, as genetic analyzes were necessary.
According to the NTSB, the plane was chartered by Aurora Aviation for a flight operated by Upper Jets. The investigation will notably have to determine the role played by weather conditions in the accident. The rental company Jettly, which also offered this Learjet registered N722BD in its catalog, told AFP that it had been put into service in 2004 and renovated in 2018.
