Federal investigators are examining whether the weather played a role in the crash of a Bahamas-bound plane that went down in a South Florida neighborhood Sunday, killing all nine onboard including a family of four and a 20-year-old co-pilot.
National Transportation Safety Board member Tom Chapman said during a news conference in West Palm Beach on Monday that weather is a major focus of the agency’s investigation. Investigators are also examining whether the business jet began breaking apart before crashing nose-first at the entrance of a mobile home park, he said.
But Chapman stressed that the investigation was still in its early stages.
“We will not be determining the probable cause of the crash while we’re here on scene, nor will we speculate about the cause,” he said.
The Learjet 60 left Austin around 10:37 a.m. on Sunday for North Eleuthera Airport in the Bahamas, Chapman said. Shortly before the crash, which occurred around 12:50 p.m., a pilot reported rain, ice and moderate turbulence and then declared mayday, according to archived radio communications.
The families of the seven passengers on Monday identified those killed in the crash, including Austin tech entrepreneur Adam Robinson; his wife, ceramist Helen Sharp; and their children, Emma, 4, and Charlie, 2.
In a statement, the families called Robinson and Sharp “devoted parents” and their children “the light of their lives.” A photo accompanying the statement shows the couple and their two toddlers smiling in front of blue-green water and forested mountains.
The other passengers were Rachael Reed, Charmi Fehr and Anita Maria Cetina, the families said. Cetina was Emma and Charlie’s nanny, while Reed and Fehr were a couple and friends of the family, Robinson’s father told the Austin American-Statesman.
“Charmi and Rachael were full of joy and adventure. They loved their people fiercely, fully and without hesitation,” the statement read. “Anita Maria cared for Emma and Charlie with tenderness and devotion, and she was truly part of the family.”
Robinson was the CEO and co-founder of Retention.com, a marketing technology company that helps businesses identify website visitors and reach them by email, according to a company statement. The couple shared a “love affair that will last forever,” the statement read.
The mother of 20-year-old Nathalia Filgueiras of Boca Raton, Florida, also identified her daughter as the co-pilot in an interview with the New York Times.
Filgueiras earned her pilot’s license in 2023 when she was a 17-year-old senior at West Boca Raton Community High School, according to local news reports. Records show that her license qualified her to fly that Learjet model, but not as the pilot in command.
Her mother said she had worked for Upper Jets, a private charter firm based in Fort Lauderdale. Aurora Aviation, which does business as Upper Jets, operated the aircraft, NTSB officials said. The company could not be reached for comment Monday.
Filgueiras’s father told The Washington Post on Monday that he was not ready to discuss the crash.
Although officials initially said there did not appear to be any injuries on the ground, NTSB officials said Monday that a man driving nearby suffered a leg injury.
Investigators are determining whether a recording device previously installed on the aircraft was still on the plane and, if so, what condition it might be in.
“We’re very hopeful that we can recover it,” Chapman said.
Thunderstorms were scattered across South Florida on Sunday as the plane crossed the peninsula from west to east.
Around 12:36 p.m., an air traffic controller authorized the crew to “deviate left and right,” according to archived radio communications.
At that time, a developing thunderstorm near Palm Beach was about 33,000 feet tall. Within 20 minutes, it grew to 48,300 feet as powerful winds pushed air upward. The plane flew into the storm around 12:47 p.m. at an altitude of 35,000 feet.
While water droplets are typically frozen at that altitude, a rapidly growing thunderstorm can push liquid droplets upward so quickly that they can hit an aircraft before freezing, potentially causing ice to build up rapidly.
Jeff Guzzetti, a former accident investigator at the FAA and the NTSB, suspects turbulence may have played a greater role than icing in destabilizing the plane. He said the storm’s powerful updrafts and downdrafts could have knocked the plane out of its normal flight path, causing the rapid descent.
“To me, it has the earmarks of a weather-induced upset event,” Guzzetti said.
Joel Flores, a Palm Beach County commissioner, said Sunday that about 600 residents of the mobile home park were evacuated to nearby shelters.
It was not immediately clear how many residents remained displaced Monday or when they could return.
Recovering wreckage from the crater left in the roadway will be a major challenge, NTSB officials said. They urged the public to leave debris undisturbed and share any photographs or videos that could help investigators.
“Our mission is to understand not just what happened but why it happened, and to recommend changes to prevent it from happening again,” Chapman said.
Matthew Cappucci and Liam Scott contributed to this report.
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