A business jet crashed into a South Florida neighbourhood and erupted into a ball of flames, killing all nine people on board and leaving a fiery crater.
The cause was not immediately clear, but federal investigators are expected to provide an update today.
Video recorded by passersby captured the terrifying moment when the Bahamas-bound aircraft plunged from the sky before slamming into the ground and exploding in Greenacres, about 11 kilometers southwest of West Palm Beach.
Flames flickered around chunks of pavement lining the crater as shocked residents looked on in horror. Thick black smoke engulfed the crash site.
“Debris was everywhere. Debris hit my house. Everything was on fire. The road was on fire,” Anthony Blackmon, who lives near the crash site, told NBC affiliate WTVJ. “I’ve always seen it on the news, never thought it would happen so close to somebody like how it happened today.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said there were no immediate reports of anyone on the ground injured or killed. Authorities have not released the names of the people who died.
Palm Beach County authorities evacuated about 600 people from a nearby mobile home community while the Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board investigate the crash.
Mother identifies one of the pilots
Authorities have not provided any information about what caused the Bahamas-bound jet to crash. NTSB officials planned to hold a news conference in West Palm Beach later today.
The jet began its journey at the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in Texas. Airport spokesperson Jim Reynolds described it as a private aircraft but could not immediately provide details about who was on board.
Camila Corteleti told the New York Post and New York Times that her daughter, 20-year-old Nathalia Gadelha Filgueiras, was one of the pilots. She earned her pilot's license in 2023 while a 17-year-old senior at West Boca Raton Community High School in Florida, local news reports said at the time.
Her pilot's license showed she had the rating to fly that model of Learjet but not to be in command of the flight.
Her father, Allan Filgueiras, told The Associated Press he wasn’t prepared to speak about the crash.
Pilot reported turbulence and ice, then the jet's rapid descent
The plane was heading east at 35,000 feet (11,000 meters) when the pilot started to report problems.
The pilot said ice was accumulating on the jet and that turbulence was jolting it by as much as 213 meters, according to air traffic control recordings captured by LiveATC.net. Rain pounded the region.
“We have light, clear ice that is manageable and moderate turbulence,” the pilot told controllers.
The situation rapidly deteriorated.
The pilot requested permission to climb another 2,000 feet (about 610 meters) and then quickly declared an emergency as the jet lost altitude at an alarming rate.
“We’re descending 8,000 — mayday, mayday — we’re descending 10,000 feet per minute,” the pilot radioed.
“We are in an overspeed condition descending 20,000 feet per minute,” the pilot radioed. Moments later, the pilot said: “We’re going to crash into the ground.”
Video shows the plane banking sharply to the right before crashing and exploding.
“It was a cataclysmic plane crash,” DeSantis told reporters at the scene. “It looked like a missile going down and left a big crater on the side of the road.”
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