20-year-old woman was part of team piloting plane that slammed into Florida street killing 9 - The Independent
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The co-pilot of a private jet that crashed in Florida on Sunday — killing all nine people on board — has been identified as 20-year-old Nathalia Filgueiras, according to a report.
Filgueiras was co-piloting a Learjet 60 traveling from Texas to the Bahamas on Sunday afternoon when the aircraft nose-dived and crashed in a residential part of Palm Beach, leaving a smoking crater on the side of the road.
The Boca Raton, Florida, native had been passionate about flying her entire life. She logged more than 1,300 hours after earning her pilot’s license at 17, her mother, Camila Corteleti, told The New York Times.
Audio captured one of the pilots on board radioing in a “mayday” call as the plane rapidly fell, descending 20,000 feet per minute.
“We are going to crash into the ground,” the unidentified pilot says at one point, later adding, “We’re out of time.”
The aircraft left Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in Texas bound for the Bahamas when it nose-dived in Florida. Witnesses captured footage of the crash showing the plane erupting into a massive fireball on the side of a road.
Corteleti said her daughter worked for Upper Jets, a private charter company based in Fort Lauderdale. She did not know the identity of the other pilot on board, and it was unclear who was in control when the plane began to drop, she told the Times.
“She loved the freedom,” Corteleti said of her daughter. “It was completely different seeing the world from the top.”
In 2023, CBS12, a news outlet based in Southern Florida, reported that Filgueiras received her private pilot’s license when she was a senior in high school — and was able to fly a plane before being able to drive a car.
“I like being different than everyone,” she said at the time.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis later described the crash as “cataclysmic,” telling reporters, “It looked like a missile going down and left a big crater on the side of the road.”
The plane was heading east at 35,000 feet when the pilot started to report issues, radioing in that ice was accumulating on the jet and that turbulence was jolting it by as much as 700 feet. Soon after, the pilot was declaring an emergency.
DeSantis said there were no immediate reports of anyone on the ground who was killed or injured in the crash.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy confirmed on social media that the Federal Aviation Administration is sending a team to assist an investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board into the incident.
The Federal Aviation Administration has not yet confirmed what caused the crash.
Authorities have not released the names of the victims in the crash.
It was not immediately clear how many of the victims were passengers and how many were members of the plane’s crew.
NTSB officials plan to hold a news conference on the crash in West Palm Beach on Monday.
