Palm Beach jet crash kills 9 and leaves fiery crater behind: What to know
A business jet crashed into a South Florida neighborhood 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 Monday.
Here’s what to know.
Where and when did the crash happen?
The crash happened in Greenacres in Palm Beach County, about 7 miles southwest of West Palm Beach, at around 12:50 p.m. ET. It left a gaping hole in the roadway, and Military Trail was closed between Cresthaven Boulevard and 10th Avenue North.
How many victims are there? What do we know about them?
Nine people were aboard the plane when it nose-dived into the road. The FAA said there were no survivors. Their names and identities have not been released.
Family members identified one of the victims as pilot Nathalia Filgueiras.
The crash also displaced hundreds of people near a mobile home park. District 3 Commissioner Joel Flores said officials were working to ensure about 600 people affected by the crash had a safe place to stay Sunday night.
What kind of plane was involved in the crash?
The plane that crashed in Palm Beach County was a LearJet 60, which is a medium-size business jet, according to GlobalAir.com.
The 58-foot plane has a max occupancy of two crew members and eight passengers, per the site. The jet, manufactured by Bombardier Aerospace, has a maximum range of just over 2,400 nautical miles.
The plane was traveling from Austin, Texas, to North Eleuthera Airport in the Bahamas.
What did witnesses see and hear?
The impact forced hundreds of people from a nearby mobile home community to evacuate, including Abelino Temaj.
“I heard the sound, it was like, like a missile, literally like a missile,” he said. “And then… I feel the ground shaking.”
Another man told NBC6 that it looked like “a meteor” had crashed into the ground, with “water coming out of the crater, and a big fire, too.”
“Think of a meteor hitting the ground. It literally just looked like a hole in the ground, and like the street was just coming up out of it. I didn’t see any plane parts or nothing, I mean it was kind of hard to see, but yeah, it just looked like a meteor hit the ground,” he said.
Nearby resident Anthony Blackmon said he was about 500 feet from the crash and described the experience as terrifying.
“Debris was everywhere. Debris hit my house. Everything was on fire. The road was on fire,” Blackmon said. “I’ve always seen it on the news, never thought it would happen so close to somebody like how it happened today.”
Another nearby resident Roger Forcelle said he felt the aircraft pass over his home shortly before the crash.
“It shook the whole house. It went right over us and crashed probably less than half a mile from where I live,” Forcelle said. “Everybody came out of their houses because you could feel it shaking.”
He said he later saw a cloud of smoke rising from the area and was unable to return home after leaving to run errands.
What kind of damage was left behind?
Video from the scene showed a massive, fiery crater in the ground.
It was not immediately clear if the crash caused significant damage to homes, but it did displace hundreds of people near a mobile home park.
District 3 Commissioner Joel Flores said officials were working to ensure about 600 people had a safe place to stay Sunday night.
What did the pilot say before the plane went down?
The plane was heading east at 35,000 feet 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 700 feet, according to air traffic control recordings captured by LiveATC.net. Rain pounded the region on Sunday.
“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) 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, before delivering a devastating acknowledgment of what was about to happen. “We’re going to crash into the ground.”
The plane banked sharply to the right before crashing and exploding.
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