WEST PALM BEACH, Florida — The Learjet 60 that nose-dived into a residential street in Greenacres on Sunday, November 1, killing all nine people on board, appears to have started breaking up before it hit the ground, a federal investigator said on Monday — the first official update in a crash Awaaz Punjab reported on Sunday, when the Bahamas-bound charter jet fell onto Military Trail and exploded in a ball of flames.

Source: Associated Press

"We do have some indication that the aircraft was breaking up before impact," National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) member Tom Chapman said at a news conference in West Palm Beach on Monday. "We may find parts of the aircraft some distance away from the actual impact site." Reuters, reporting the same briefing, said Chapman described a massive crater by the road near the entrance to a mobile home park, partially filled with water because of the severe storms that swept the area on Sunday.

The final minutes, in the pilot's own calls

The jet had taken off from Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in Texas and was heading east at 35,000 feet (about 11,000 metres) when the pilot began reporting problems, Chapman said. In air traffic control recordings captured by LiveATC.net, the pilot said ice was accumulating on the jet and that turbulence was jolting it by as much as 700 feet (about 210 metres). "We have light, clear ice that is manageable and moderate turbulence," the pilot told controllers, the Associated Press reported.

The situation then deteriorated within moments. The pilot asked to climb another 2,000 feet, then 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," he radioed. Then: "We are in an overspeed condition descending 20,000 feet per minute." Moments later, the pilot said: "We're going to crash into the ground." Video recorded by passersby shows the plane banking sharply to the right before it crashed and exploded in Greenacres, about 7 miles (11 kilometres) southwest of West Palm Beach.

Weather will be a major focus of the investigation, Chapman said. Rain pounded the region on Sunday, and weather radar maps that FlightRadar24 combined with the plane's flight path appear to show it flying directly into a storm cell that was rapidly expanding upward. Chapman cautioned, however, that investigators still have to determine what the weather conditions actually were at 35,000 feet.

What investigators will examine next

Aviation safety expert Jeff Guzzetti, a former NTSB and Federal Aviation Administration investigator, told the Associated Press that key components of the jet's tail may have been lost during the turbulence or as it nose-dived. "If that happens you cannot control an airplane at that point. And that very well could explain the missile-like profile just before it hit the ground," Guzzetti said. His comments are an expert's early assessment, not an NTSB finding; the board has not assigned a cause.

Chapman said the plane was originally equipped with a cockpit voice recorder, which investigators hope to recover from the wreckage. "We have a lot of work to do on scene," NTSB investigator Timothy Monville said at the same briefing. "This will be a several-day process, and the biggest obstacle that we're going to have is recovering the major wreckage from the impacted crater on the roadway." A man who was driving close to the scene as the plane crashed suffered leg wounds, Monville said; the extent of his injury was not known.

A neighbourhood still out of its homes

Palm Beach County Commissioner Joel G. Flores said at the news conference that the county "doesn't have a clue" when residents who live around the crash site will be able to return home while investigators comb the area. A shelter has been established for the residents of almost 80 mobile homes near the site, Flores said. "Our concern right now is clearing the scene so that our residents can get back to normal," he said. Resident Anthony Blackmon, who lives near the site, told NBC affiliate WTVJ: "Debris was everywhere. Debris hit my house. Everything was on fire. The road was on fire."

Authorities have not officially released the names of the nine people who died, and the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office declined to discuss its death investigation, which is ongoing. One of the pilots was identified by her mother, speaking to the New York Post and the New York Times, as a 20-year-old who had earned her pilot's licence in 2023 as a high school senior in Florida; her licence carried the rating to fly that model of Learjet but not to be in command of the flight, the Associated Press reported. Her father told the AP he was not prepared to speak about the crash. Palm Beach County Mayor Sara Baxter asked the public to keep the victims in their thoughts and prayers.

Awaaz Punjab's first report on Sunday covered the crash itself — the jet's 27,000-foot fall in about a minute, the closure of Military Trail and the start of the federal investigation. Read the original crash report