One of the pilots of a private plane that crashed into a Florida neighborhood over the weekend, killing all nine on board and leaving a fiery crater, has been identified by her family.
Nathalia G. Filgueiras was the co-pilot flying a Learjet from Austin, Texas, to the Bahamas on Sunday when it crashed and exploded near West Palm Beach with eight other people aboard, the 20-year-old’s father, Allan Filgueiras, confirmed to NBC Miami.
Filgueiras’ sister, Giulia, said their family is from Brazil and that Filgueiras learned to fly from her father, who is also a pilot.
Giulia Filgueiras said flying was her sister’s greatest passion.
Filgueiras earned her license in 2023 when she was a 17-year-old senior at West Boca Raton Community High School, according to local news reports at the time.
Her pilot’s license showed she had the rating to fly the jet but not to be in command of the flight.
Video recorded by passersby captured the terrifying moment the aircraft plunged from the sky, before striking near the roadway and exploding in Greenacres, about seven miles 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 Miami. “I’ve always seen it on the news, never thought it would happen so close to somebody like how it happened today.”
National Transportation Safety Board member Tom Chapman said evidence found at the crash site indicates the aircraft was breaking up before it made impact Sunday and that parts of the plane could be found some distance away.
“We do have some indication that the aircraft was breaking up before impact,” Chapman said. “We may find parts of the aircraft some distance away from the actual impact site.”
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 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,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis told reporters at the scene. “It looked like a missile going down and left a big crater on the side of the road.”
