The father of the co-pilot killed with eight others when a private jet crashed in a Florida neighborhood praised his daughter’s expertise and her passion for aviation in public remarks on Friday.
“She was gifted,” Allan Filgueiras said of his daughter Nathalia, 20, at a news conference in South Florida. “She showed me what it is to be a hero,” he added.
He said that she was an experienced pilot who acted professionally as the plane went through moderate turbulence and then plummeted toward the ground.
The Learjet 60 in which she was the co-pilot was traveling from Texas to the Bahamas on Nov. 1 when it crashed into a road near a residential neighborhood, about four miles from Palm Beach.
Before the plane crashed, Ms. Filgueiras radioed air traffic controllers reporting “light, clear ice that is manageable, and moderate turbulence,” according to archived communications.
Soon after, she declared Mayday, a life-threatening emergency. Ms. Filgueiras radioed that the plane was descending at a rate of 20,000 feet per minute.
“We’re going to crash into the ground,” she said before the crash.
Mr. Filgueiras, a pilot himself who had helped teach his daughter to fly, said that he had listened to the audio recordings many times, trying to find clues for what went wrong.
“She made me so proud,” he said. “Once you see that coming, a lot of the big boys, military or whatever, they can’t handle it, and she was the one over there, to the last minute, fighting.”
Ms. Filgueiras, of Boca Raton, Fla., had logged more than 1,300 hours of flight time and received her pilot’s license at 17, according to her mother, Camila Corteleti.
A lawyer for Mr. Filgueiras and his family said at the news conference that they were not lodging accusations or filing lawsuits, and added that Friday’s statements were made in part to defend Ms. Filgueiras’s reputation.
“Nathalia was beyond an average pilot. She was extraordinary,” the lawyer, Stuart Z. Grossman, said. “She was at the top of her class in everything that she did, and she was perfectly qualified to be the co-pilot on this flight despite her tender years.”
On Tuesday, a key part of the jet was found in fragments, including at a spot nearly four miles from the crash site. The part, known as the left tail elevator, was a “very important piece of evidence,” Thomas B. Chapman, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board, said at a news conference on Tuesday.
On Thursday, the N.T.S.B. said it had recovered a portion of one engine, and that debris had been scattered on the roofs of homes and buildings in the area.
The N.T.S.B. is leading an investigation into the crash, with help from the Federal Aviation Administration.
Mr. Grossman said the family would review the results of the government investigation.
The flight was carrying a Texas family of four, including two young children; the family’s nanny; two friends of the family; and the two pilots.
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