A friend of 20-year-old co-pilot Nathalia Filgueiras says air traffic control recordings from the moments before a Learjet 60 crashed in Florida were “probably the worst thing I’ve ever heard.” All nine people aboard the aircraft died in the Nov. 1 crash.
Mikaela Schluth, who said she had known Filgueiras since middle school, told CBS News she was proud of how her friend stayed calm and relayed information. In the radio audio, a voice reports a rapid descent and declares an emergency, including the words, “we are in an overspeed condition descending 20,000 feet per minute.”
The Learjet was traveling from Austin, Texas, to North Eleuthera in the Bahamas when it went down in Palm Beach County. Filgueiras was flying with captain Jeffrey Gregory, 55. The seven passengers included a couple from Austin and their two young children.
Investigators are examining weather and wreckage
Investigators are looking at the aircraft’s encounter with severe weather. The crew reported icing and turbulence before the rapid descent, according to information from the National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation. Those conditions are under examination, not a confirmed cause of the crash.
Former NTSB chair Robert Sumwalt told CBS that icing, thunderstorms and associated turbulence were possible lines of inquiry. Another question is whether any part of the aircraft separated before impact; investigators have not established that the horizontal stabilizer broke off.
The NTSB is working to recover major wreckage from the crash site and determine whether the cockpit voice recorder can be retrieved. The air traffic control transmissions are separate from that recorder, whose contents could help investigators reconstruct events inside the aircraft. The NTSB investigation remains open, and no cause has been determined.
Reid Bentley