THE nine people killed in the devastating Learjet crash may have endured a terrifying final 30 seconds as violent forces tossed them around the cabin, aviation experts fear.
The Learjet 60 was flying from Austin, Texas, to the Bahamas on Sunday, November 1, when it encountered dangerous weather over Florida.
The doomed private jet plunged nearly 27,000 feet in under a minute before smashing into a residential street in Palm Beach County and erupting into a fireball.
Horrifying ATC audio captured 20-year-old screaming that they were going to crash, while captain Jeffrey Gregory, 55, reportedly began praying.
The U.S. Sun spoke to former US Department of Transportation Inspector General Mary Schiavo and veteran pilot and aviation attorney Ed Booth about the passengers’ final moments.
Schiavo, who has investigated and litigated numerous aviation disasters, fears those on board endured 30 seconds of unimaginable terror while remaining fully conscious throughout the plunge.
She said, “Some people speculate if you pull enough G’s, you’ll black out. I don’t think they blacked out. I think they had to experience this.”
The former aviation safety official described how the passengers and crew would have experienced severe forces, being forcefully pressed into their seats and violently jolted around.
She told The U.S. Sun, “That’s not really a descent, that’s a fall.”
Schiavo also fears the passengers could have heard the pilots’ desperate final cries, with little separating the cockpit from the cabin.
She explained, “In a small jet, you don’t have what you have on commercial passenger service jet liners. You don’t have that solid door between the cockpit and the passenger cabin.
“They would have heard the screaming of the first officer and the praying and the pilot was allegedly saying the Lord’s Prayer.
“They would have heard that and I would imagine the pilots would have heard their passengers screaming too.”
Schiavo described the ordeal as “the most terrifying, unimaginable thirty seconds,” adding, “It’s just even hard to fathom what that would be like.”
Booth, a Florida-based aviation attorney and pilot with decades of flying experience, warned that the passengers would also have faced a deafening roar as the jet accelerated towards the ground.
He told The U.S. Sun, “The noise would have been deafening from the airflow around the fuselage.
“This airplane was traveling probably a little bit in excess of 700 miles an hour on impact.”
Booth added, “There would have been perhaps some negative G forces imposed on the occupants, but it would be more the sound of the wind rushing past the fuselage and would have been obvious to everybody on board that things were not going to end well.”
The veteran pilot believes the disaster may have been triggered by a phenomenon known as tailplane icing, which can cause an aircraft to lose control when ice accumulates on its rear flying surfaces.
He explained, “The rear control surface, sometimes called the horizontal stabilizer, functions in flight by providing a downward force on the tail of the airplane. It’s what keeps the airplane in level flight.”
“Once rendered ineffective, the nose pitches down, and there’s nothing the pilot can do to recover.”
“The airspeed builds up, it exceeds the maximum structural speed for that aircraft.”
According to Booth, the Learjet may have flown into a rapidly developing thunderstorm containing supercooled water droplets, which can freeze rapidly on contact with an aircraft.
He warned, “When an airplane with an outside air temperature of minus 50 degrees encounters supercooled water, the ice can build up on the control surfaces, the flying surfaces, the wing, the horizontal stabilizer, at a frightening rate.”
Booth believes the aircraft may have exceeded its structural limits during the plunge, causing critical components to break away in midair.
He said, “Once they made the conscious decision to fly into this system, their fate was sealed.”
However, investigators have not established whether icing caused the crash or what information the crew had about the approaching weather.
Investigators revealed that a large section of the jet’s left elevator, a critical part of the tail used to control its pitch, was found nearly four miles from the impact site in Palm Beach County.
The discovery has raised questions about why the tail broke apart before impact, although the precise sequence of events remains unclear.
Schiavo warned that losing such a crucial control surface could have made recovery impossible, saying, “Without that, you cannot pull the nose up. It’s just impossible.”
The tragedy claimed the lives of , 45, his wife Helen Sharp, 40, and their children Emma, four, and Charlie, two.
Their nanny Anita Maria Cetina and family friends Rachael Reed and Charmi Fehr were also killed, along with captain Gregory and co-pilot Filgueiras.
A revealed that Filgueiras initially reported “light, clear ice that is manageable” and moderate turbulence before requesting permission to climb from 35,000 feet to 37,000 feet.
But the situation rapidly deteriorated, with the co-pilot issuing a mayday call and reporting that the aircraft was descending at 20,000 feet per minute before screaming, “We’re going to crash into the ground.”
Her final reported words were, “Holy f**k we’re out of time,” before the radio transmission fell silent.
Booth praised the young aviator, who had at just 17, saying, “She showed an incredible degree of professionalism,” comparing her conduct to that of a seasoned pilot.
Filgueiras had also reportedly sent a to her boyfriend about ice and turbulence around ten minutes before the crash.
Schiavo believes the crew should have landed and waited out the storm or diverted rather than attempting to climb above it.
She explained that the storm clouds may have reached as high as 48,000 feet, warning, “That two thousand foot deviation was not going to get them out of the situation.”
Booth believes the crew may have encountered the rapidly developing storm at the worst possible moment, saying, “If they’d come through it five minutes later, probably nothing would have happened. If they’d been through two minutes earlier, nothing would have happened.”
However, Schiavo stressed that it remains too early to establish how much warning the crew had or whether they could have avoided the storm, as the National Transportation Safety Board continues investigating the cause of the disaster.
For the full interview with Mary Schiavo and Ed Booth, visit The U.S. Sun’s YouTube channel.
