The co-pilot in a Learjet 60 that crashed nose-first on a busy South Florida street yesterday, killing nine people, was reportedly Nathalia Gadelha, a 20-year-old aviator from Boca Raton who obtained her pilot’s license while she was in high school, according to her family.
Gadelha’s mother, Camila, and her stepfather confirmed the girl’s identity to the New York Post. Gadelha, who also used the name Nathalia Filgueiras, was the second-in-command on a flight from Austin, Texas, to North Eleuthera, Bahamas. No victims’ identities had been made public by Monday afternoon, including whether those on board were passengers or crew members.
The jet crashed around 12:50 pm on South Military Trail between Cresthaven Boulevard and 10th Avenue North in Greenacres in a fireball, digging a huge hole just feet from homes and businesses. According to county officials, no one on the ground was injured.
“It was a cataclysmic plane crash,” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis told reporters at the scene, comparing the jet’s fall to a missile. U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy confirmed everyone on board had died in what he described as a “horrific tragedy.”
CBS12 News in West Palm Beach interviewed Gadelha in October 2023 when she was 17 and a senior at West Boca Raton High School. She earned her private pilot’s license that September after accumulating 88 flight hours despite not having a driver’s license. Palm Beach County School District covered the cost through its Aviation Academy, according to reports.
She told the station that she completed ground school in 2020 and learned a lot from her father, who started flying recreationally in 2018. When her classmates were teasing her about not having a driver’s license, she replied, “Yeah, but I can fly.”
At the time, she wanted to become a commercial airline pilot. She later graduated from American Flyers, a flight school headquartered in Addison, Texas, with a campus in Pompano Beach, Florida, according to the Post.
In the moments before the crash, the crew told Miami air traffic controllers they were experiencing light icing and moderate turbulence and requested an altitude increase, according to recordings obtained by LiveATC.net. The pilot told the crew the plane was jolting up and down by as much as 700 feet before the crew declared a Mayday. In their last transmission, a crew member reported an overspeed condition and descent of 20,000 feet per minute, saying, “We’re going to crash into the ground.” The speaker’s identity on the tape hasn’t been released.
The FAA said the jet fell from 35,250 feet to 8,750 feet in a little over a minute before it hit the ground. Scattered thunderstorms were in the area at the time, and the plane had passed through a stronger storm cell a few minutes earlier before beginning its descent, although the role of weather in the accident isn’t clear.
FAA records show the jet, about 22 years old, is registered to a Delaware limited liability company. Bombardier, the manufacturer of the Learjet 60, said it was deeply saddened by the tragic accident and would assist in the investigation.
NTSB is handling the investigation with assistance from the FAA. NTSB member Tom Chapman was scheduled to brief reporters at 1 pm on Monday at the Palm Beach County Emergency Operations Center in West Palm Beach, outlining the investigation process and work to be done at the crash site in the coming days. NTSB usually releases a preliminary report in about 30 days, with a determination of the probable cause of the accident coming in a year or longer.
This is the second deadliest accident in the United States this year, according to NTSB records cited by CNN, after a skydiving-plane accident in Butler, Missouri, in June that resulted in the death of 12 people.
About 600 residents of the nearby mobile home park have been evacuated to the Greenacres Community Center. John I. Leonard High School, close to the crash site, was closed on Monday while a major section of Military Trail was closed off. Power outages occurred in parts of the area after the impact.
Anthony Blackmon, who lives about 500 feet from the crash site, said debris hit his house. Another man who rushed to the site said all he saw was a hole and water spewing out of a broken main.
Bishop Manuel de Jesús Rodríguez of the Diocese of Palm Beach has asked for prayers for the families of the victims and the people affected by the crash. The diocese is holding a Mass in memory of the nine victims.
