Parts of plane that crashed in Palm Beach County found miles from impact site, NTSB says

Pieces of the jet which crashed Sunday in Palm Beach Countykilling nine people, were found nearly 6 kilometers from the accident site, investigators said Tuesday.

Tom Chapman, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board, said at a news conference that the discovery of part of the tail located so far from the impact crater was an indication that the plane was likely breaking up before hitting the ground.

He said parts of the plane were up to 3.8 miles from the impact site.

Chapman said the tail elevator was broken in three parts. Without this element intact, the pilots would not have been able to pull the Learjet 60 out of its dive.

“The function of the elevator is to control the pitch up and down,” he explained. “At those speeds, I don’t know if it would have been effective even if it had still been attached to the aircraft, but knowing that it was lost is a very important piece of evidence that directs us to other things to investigate.”

Chapman acknowledged Monday that parts of the plane likely began to break apart before it hit the ground. The co-pilot, Nathalia Gadelha Filgueiras, 20, told air traffic controllers minutes before the crash that ice was building up on the plane and severe turbulence had thrown it up and down more than 700 feet, before declaring “mayday”.

Filgueiras can be heard saying in air traffic control audio recordings that the jet was descending rapidly. The messages grew increasingly alarming before the Learjet 60, which was traveling from Austin, Texas, to the Bahamas, crashed and burst into a ball of fire.

Palm Beach County plane crash victims identified

Passengers who died in the accident have been identified like Adam Robinson and Helen Sharp, an Austin couple; their two young children, Emma, ​​4, and Charlie, 2; Rachael Reed, Charmi Fehr and Anita Maria Cetina.

The other pilot was identified by family and friends as 55-year-old Jeff Gregory.

As the plane plunged toward the ground, a man’s voice could be heard reciting the Lord’s Prayer in the background. Friends said they were convinced it was Gregory, who was a devout Christian.

WPEC, the CBS News Miami affiliate in West Palm Beach, interviewed Filgueiras three years ago, when she was a high school student in Boca Raton. She got her pilot’s license before her driver’s license.