Co-pilot, 20, among nine killed as Learjet crashes in Florida

Nathalia Filgueiras, a 20-year-old co-pilot who earned her pilot's licence at 17, was among nine people killed when a Learjet 60 bound for the Bahamas crashed in Florida on Sunday.

The jet left Austin, Texas, entered a steep nosedive and hit a road in the Greenacres area of Palm Beach County on the afternoon of 1 November, her mother and stepfather confirmed. It left a smouldering crater in a residential neighbourhood, and nobody on board survived.

Moments earlier, Filgueiras radioed air traffic controllers in Miami to report rain and "light, clear ice that is manageable, and moderate turbulence", according to archived communications. She asked whether the aircraft could climb to 37,000 feet.

She then declared mayday and screamed that the plane was descending at 20,000 feet per minute. "We're going to crash into the ground," she said.

About 10 minutes before the crash, Filgueiras had texted her boyfriend, Justin, her stepfather Thiago Corteleti, 44, told the Post. "She just said, 'I've got turbulence, I've got ice,'" Corteleti said.

Her mother, Camila Corteleti, said she had long feared where her daughter's ambition would lead. "I wanted her to live her dream, but I knew that her dream was going to be the thing that would take her away from me," she said from her home in Palm Beach County.

Filgueiras, from Boca Raton, would have turned 21 in January. She had worked as a commercial pilot for nine months, flying for Upper Jets, a private charter firm based in Fort Lauderdale, and had logged more than 1,300 hours, her family said.

She began lessons in 2020 and received her licence in October 2023 while a senior at West Boca Raton High School, before she held a driver's licence. The School District of Palm Beach County's Aviation Academy, launched that year, paid for the training.

"I definitely do brag because people say, 'Oh, you can't drive,' and I'm like, 'Yeah, but I can fly,'" she told CBS12 at the time.

Camila Corteleti said her daughter announced at about 12 that she wanted to fly, after years of watching planes at Boca Raton Airport and flying with her father, a recreational pilot. "She loved the freedom," she said. "It was completely different seeing the world from the top."

Filgueiras trained at American Flyers, a school based in Addison, Texas, with a branch in Pompano Beach. She went on to instruct at another Fort Lauderdale school before taking her next flying job, and her mother said employers were quick to hire her. "Everybody was so impressed with her. They hired her because they knew how good she was and how much she loved it," Camila Corteleti said.

The pilot was Jeff Gregory, an aviator with years of experience, according to April Honnen, his former employer.

A joint statement from the families on Monday named the passengers as Adam Robinson, Helen Sharp and their children, Emma and Charlie, who lived in Austin. Robinson founded and led several technology companies, while Sharp worked in public relations and had recently opened a ceramics studio.

The group also included Anita Maria Cetina, a nanny who "cared for Emma and Charlie with tenderness and devotion", the statement said. Friends Rachael Reed and Charmi Fehr completed the manifest.

"They were exceptional people," said Kevin Sims, who sold the family a home in 2019. "They were young, dynamic, kind, generous, warm."

Robert Joslin, an associate professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida, said a two-person cockpit typically has one pilot flying and one monitoring. Those roles are commonly described as pilot and co-pilot.

Thomas B. Chapman of the National Transportation Safety Board told a Monday news conference that investigators had not recovered a cockpit voice recorder. He could not say whether the aircraft carried one.

Investigator Timothy W. Monville said documenting the scene would take several days. "The biggest obstacle that we're going to have is recovering the major wreckage from the impacted crater on the roadway," he said.