JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – An aviation expert says ice may have brought down a Learjet that crashed on Nov. 1, killing all nine people on board.
News4JAX spoke one-on-one with Edward Booth, a board-certified aviation attorney and airline transport-rated pilot with 49 years of aviation experience. Booth said he instantly looked at weather conditions after hearing about the crash.
“I immediately looked at the weather prevailing at the time and thought initially that it must’ve been caused by some weather phenomena that the aircraft encountered,” Booth said. “When I heard that they were reporting clear icing, visible precipitation and an outside temp of minus 50 Fahrenheit, I think it becomes clear that this was a situation where the tail of the airplane became contaminated by ice and rendered it uncontrollable.”
How ice can bring down a plane
Booth explained that each aircraft has a maximum airspeed based on its structural limits. When ice builds up on the tail of a plane, it can cause the tail to become inoperative or stall. At that point, the nose pitches downward — and there is nothing a pilot can do to pull it back up. Once the plane exceeds that maximum speed, Booth said, nothing can be done.
What we know about the flight
The chartered Learjet was approximately 20 years old. The co-pilot has been identified, but the captain has not yet been identified, according to reports. Nine people were killed in the crash.
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