Jet may have broken apart before Florida crash that killed nine, including a family of four

A little before 1 p.m. on Sunday, a Learjet 60 came down onto Military Trail in Palm Beach, Florida, a six-lane road lined with businesses and restaurants. It hit at about 12:50 local time (17:50 GMT) and exploded on impact. All nine people aboard died. One man in a car on the ground suffered a leg injury.

The jet had left Austin, Texas, bound for the Bahamas. Heavy rain and thunderstorms were reported in the Palm Beach area when it fell. Debris landed across sports fields, businesses and homes nearby, and the plane left a large crater in the road close to the entrance of a mobile home park.

That crater is now the central problem for investigators. Tim Monville, the lead investigator for the US National Transportation Safety Board, told a news conference on Monday that recovering the major wreckage from it would be the biggest obstacle. Severe storms have partly filled the crater with water. The NTSB says weather will be a major focus of its inquiry.

The board also has early evidence that the aircraft did not arrive in one piece. "We do have some evidence that there was some breakup of the aircraft before impact," said the NTSB's Tom Chapman, who added that parts might be found some distance from the impact site. Officials are also trying to establish whether a cockpit voice recorder was aboard and, if so, whether it can be recovered. Flight analysis indicates the jet was falling at hundreds of feet per second before it hit the ground.

Air traffic control recordings capture the crew's last minutes. Someone in the cockpit reported moderate turbulence and said the crew was managing the ice. The same voice then said the plane was picking up precipitation and that they needed to climb. Moments later, the voice reported a descent of 10,000 feet (3,048m) per minute. An emergency was declared, and the voice can be heard shouting that they were in an overspeed condition, descending at 20,000 feet per minute, before saying they were going to crash into the ground.

Seven of the dead were passengers. A joint statement named them as tech entrepreneur Adam Robinson, his wife Helen Sharp, and their children Emma, four, and Charlie, two, along with family friends Rachael Reed and Charmi Fehr, and the children's nanny, Anita Maria Cetina. Robinson's LinkedIn page describes him as founder and CEO of RB2B and Retention.com, and CEO of Moltsets, all technology companies. He previously worked at Lehman Brothers and Barclays. Media reports describe Sharp as an artist. Their families called them devoted parents whose children were the light of their lives, and said of the couple: "Helen and Adam were the love affair that will last forever." The statement said Cetina cared for the children with tenderness and devotion and was truly part of the family. Reed and Fehr were described as full of joy and adventure.

Media reports named the pilot as Jeffrey Gregory, 55, who was married with two children. East Coast Jets, where he used to work, said it was deeply saddened by the loss of Capt Jeff Gregory. The co-pilot, reported to be Nathalia Filgueiras, was 20 and had earned her pilot's licence at 17. Her mother, Camila Corteleti, confirmed her death to US media and told the New York Times: "She loved the freedom." In a 2023 interview with a local CBS affiliate, while still a high school senior, Filgueiras said she liked being different, and joked that people found it odd she could fly planes but not drive a car.

What the NTSB can learn now depends on getting the wreckage out of the water-filled crater, finding any parts that fell away in the air, and determining whether a voice recorder survived.