Nine die as Learjet plunges onto Florida highway

A Learjet 60 carrying nine people plunged into a multi-lane highway in Palm Beach County, Florida, on Sunday, killing everyone aboard, including two children aged four and two.

The jet had left Austin, Texas, for the Bahamas when its 20-year-old co-pilot, Nathalia Filgueiras, shouted "Mayday, mayday!" in an increasingly panicked voice as the aircraft fell.

Air traffic audio shows the pilot had reported ice accumulating on the plane, an outside air temperature of -47 degrees Celsius and moderate turbulence only minutes earlier.

Filgueiras then told the Miami Air Route Traffic Control Center, "We're descending 10,000 feet per minute!" She yelled seconds later, "We are in an overspeed condition descending 20,000 feet per minute."

"It was a cataclysmic plane crash," Gov. Ron DeSantis said. "It looked like a missile going down."

The wreckage gouged a massive crater beside passing cars. Officials first said nobody on the ground was hurt, but the National Transportation Safety Board confirmed on Monday that one person suffered a leg injury.

Debris now blocks the entrance to a mobile home park, leaving about 600 residents without shelter, according to Joel Flores, the Palm Beach County commissioner for District 3 and the first county official at the scene. He said they are being moved to two shelters while investigators examine the site.

The victims

Adam Robinson and Helen Sharp

A joint statement from some of the families identified the dead as Texas technology entrepreneur Adam Robinson, his wife Helen Sharp and their children Emma and Charlie. Rachael Reed, Charmi Fehr and Anita Maria Cetina were also on the jet.

"Helen and Adam were the love affair that will last forever," Robinson's brother, Anthony, said in the statement on Monday. "Their warmth, generosity and gift for making people feel welcome touched so many lives."

Robinson co-founded the email marketing platform Robly, the Associated Press reported, and later founded Retention.com. His LinkedIn page listed him as founder and chief executive of RB2B and Retention.com and chief executive of Moltsets, after earlier roles at Lehman Brothers and Barclays.

Fellow entrepreneur Jesse Ouellette wrote on LinkedIn that Robinson had helped him build his company. "He could disagree with you about almost anything, and somehow you'd walk away liking him even more," he added.

Sharp worked in public relations and ran a ceramics business. She grew up in Houston, studied at the University of Arizona and met Robinson in Argentina, while the couple split their time between Aspen, Colorado, and Austin.

Her father, Dudley Sharp, spoke to The Palm Beach Post by phone on Monday. "It's quite a blow," he said. "We had a daughter, her husband and two grandchildren on the plane."

The couple's children were Emma, four, and Charlie, two. Their family said the children were "the light of their lives".

Anita Maria Cetina

The family statement identified Cetina as a caregiver for the two children. It said she "cared for Emma and Charlie with tenderness and devotion, and she was truly part of the family".

Rachael Reed and Charmi Fehr

The statement said Reed and Fehr "were full of joy and adventure", though the families have not explained how the two women knew the Robinsons.

Nathalia Filgueiras

The co-pilot earned her pilot's licence at 17 and graduated from the American Flyers aviation school, her family said. She had logged more than 1,300 flight hours, and her mother, Camila Corteleti, told the New York Times, "She loved the freedom. It was completely different seeing the world from the top."

Captain Jeff Gregory

East Coast Jets, a private charter company, named the pilot as Gregory, 55. A spokesperson said the firm was "deeply saddened" by his death and confirmed he worked there briefly in 2016 and 2017.

Context

The crash is the second deadliest in the United States this year, according to NTSB records, behind the June skydiving plane disaster in Butler, Missouri, that killed 12. It is also the deadliest involving a Learjet 60, based on Flight Safety Foundation data, surpassing a 2008 takeoff crash in Columbia, South Carolina, that claimed four lives.

The NTSB is now investigating whether ice, turbulence or human error contributed to the jet's fatal dive.