The harrowing audio from a Learjet 60 that crashed near West Palm Beach on Sunday captures a man believed to be the pilot reciting the Lord’s Prayer as the aircraft plummeted.
The jet was traveling from Austin, Texas, to the Bahamas when it went down near West Palm Beach, killing all nine aboard; authorities have not officially identified the pilot, but family members say the co‑pilot was 20‑year‑old Nathalia Gadelha Filgueiras.
At about 35,000 feet the crew reported deteriorating conditions, initially describing manageable icing and moderate turbulence before requesting a climb as precipitation intensified.
Moments later a voice identified as Filgueiras warned that the aircraft was descending at 10,000 feet per minute, then an overspeed alarm sounded and the descent accelerated to 20,000 feet per minute, ending with a scream that the plane would crash into the ground.
Investigation Ongoing
The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the accident.
Captain DeWitt Ingram, a Learjet‑qualified pilot, told WPEC that penetrating the top of a thunderstorm could damage the airframe enough to cause loss of control.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, writing in his personal capacity, urged the public not to jump to conclusions about the crash cause or criticize Filgueiras’s final radio calls, citing more than 20 years and 8,000 flight hours on similar aircraft.
“She was the second‑in‑command (SIC) and, while empowered to flag mistakes under crew‑resource‑management principles, she was doing her job and communicating with ATC right to the end in a terrifying situation,” he wrote on X. “She likely knew before many of those calls that she was going to die, and her final words are as heartbreaking as those from military pilots with thousands of fighter‑hour experience.”
Isaacman cautioned that the aircraft’s maintenance history and any possible structural failure remain unknown, urging respect for the victims and their families.
The charter industry routinely hires commercial pilots early in their careers to gain experience alongside an ATP‑qualified captain, and Filgueiras would have met all FAA training, qualification, and checkout requirements.
