Plane parts found as far as 3.8 miles from crash site in South Florida, NTSB official says

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Investigators found part of the tail of the jet that crashed in South Florida more than a mile from the crater caused when the aircraft made impact.

National Transportation Safety Board member Tom Chapman said during a news conference Tuesday that the discovery of tail parts confirms the plane was breaking apart before it hit the ground.

Chapman said the tail’s elevator was broken into three parts, and without that intact, pilot would not have been able to pull the Learjet out of its nose dive.

“The function of the elevator is to control the pitch up and down,” he said. “At those speeds I don’t know that it would’ve 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 in terms of pointing us towards other things to investigate.”

Chapman acknowledged Monday that parts of the jet likely started to break off before it struck the ground. The co-pilot, Nathalia Gadelha Filgueiras, told air traffic controllers minutes before the crash that ice was accumulating on the plane and that severe turbulence had thrown it up and down by more than 700 feet (210 meters).

“We’re going to die!” she said with a scream before the jet slammed into the ground and erupted in a fireball.

Friends and family celebrate and mourn the pilot

Family and friends of one of the pilots have been posting online about the longtime aviator, husband and father from the Philadelphia suburbs.

Jeff Gregory, 55, was one of two crew members in the cockpit of the Bahamas-bound Learjet 60 as it encountered bad weather and slammed into the ground Sunday afternoon in Greenacres, about 7 miles (11 kilometers) southwest of West Palm Beach.

As the plane plunged, a man’s voice could be heard reciting the Lord’s Prayer in the background of the copilot’s final radio transmissions to air traffic control. Friends are convinced it was Gregory, a devout Christian.

Thomas Noetzel, the director of operations at the company that operated the flight, Upper Jets, organized an online fundraiser to support Gregory’s wife and children.

Gregory was a close, personal friend and “knowing him has made me a better person,” Noetzel wrote on the fundraising website GoFundMe.

“Jeff was a devoted, conscientious, and deeply faithful man who had a genuine passion for flying and a strong love for the Lord ,” Noetzel’s father, Walter, posted on Facebook. “His journey on earth may have ended, but I like to think he is now flying among the angels, soaring peacefully in the presence of our Lord.”

Gregory held airline transport pilot and flight instructor certificates, according to Federal Aviation Administration records. He lived in Gilbertsville, about 35 miles (56 kilometers) northwest of Philadelphia, and had previously worked for a charter company based in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

“We are deeply saddened to learn that Captain Jeff Gregory was among those who lost their lives,” said April Honnen, the director of charter sales for East Coast Jets, Inc., where he worked in 2016 and 2017. “Our prayers go out to Jeff’s family, his fellow crew member, the passengers and everyone affected by this heart breaking tragedy.”

Co-pilot radios ATC and sends panicked texts

The Learjet hit the ground with enough force to create a crater before bursting into flames. The impact scattered plane fragments over a large area.

Images of the moment just before the aircraft made impact appear to show the elevator — a horizontal stabilizer — missing from the tail. About 600 nearby residents remain displaced, but only one injury was reported on the ground.

The plane took off from Austin, Texas. The victims included technology entrepreneur Adam Robinson, his wife, Helen Sharp, and their two young children, relatives said.

Filgueiras’ stepfather, Thiago Corteleti, told the New York Post that she texted her boyfriend about 10 minutes before the crash, telling him: “I’ve got turbulence, I’ve got ice.”

The texts were sent before the situation became critical. In the last two minutes of the flight, Filgueiras shifted from calmly communicating with air traffic controllers to calling out terrifying updates as the plane plummeted.

The FAA prohibits commercial airline pilots from using cellphones at any point during a flight. The rules aren’t as strict for pilots of charter flights; they are not supposed to use cellphones during critical phases of flight, such as takeoffs and landings, but are allowed while cruising at altitude unless their company or pilot in command specifically bans it.

Tom Chapman, a National Transportation Safety Board member, said Monday that weather would be a key focus of the investigation. A preliminary report describing what happened will be released in about a month, but it will likely take more than a year to determine the cause of the crash.