One of the pilots of the Learjet 60 that crashed in a residential area in Florida, killing all nine people on board, was a 20-year-old named Nathalia Filgueiras, her mother told The New York Times. Also killed were a tech entrepreneur, his wife and their two young children, among several other people, their families said.
Filgueiras had logged more than 1,300 hours of flight time and got her pilot’s license at 17, Camila Corteleti told the Times.
The jet’s other pilot has not yet been identified. It’s not known which pilot was flying the plane when it started descending. Filgueiras’ pilot’s license showed she had the rating to fly that model of Learjet but not to be in command of the flight, The Associated Press reported.
Authorities have not yet publicly identified the victims of the crash.
Adam Robinson, his wife, Helen Sharp, and their children, 4-year-old Emma and 2-year-old Charlie, were identified as victims by their families. Anita Maria Cetina, who helped care for the children, also died.
Two more victims were identified as Rachael Reed and Charmi Fehr. The identity of the other pilot was not immediately disclosed.
Filgueiras worked for Upper Jets, a private charter firm based in Fort Lauderdale, her mother said.
Her mother told CNN Brasil that her daughter was the co-pilot.
“She was a very good girl — responsible, hardworking,” Corteleti said. “She was the co-pilot and couldn’t make any decisions.”
The Bahamas-bound aircraft fell from the sky before hitting the ground and exploding in a residential area of Greenacres, about 7 miles southwest of West Palm Beach.
A federal investigator said Monday that parts of the business jet appear to have broken off before the aircraft crashed in South Florida and erupted into a ball of flames.
“It was a cataclysmic plane crash,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said. “It looked like a missile going down.”
“We do have some indication that the aircraft was breaking up before impact,” National Transportation Safety Board member Tom Chapman said at a news conference Monday. “We may find parts of the aircraft some distance away from the actual impact site.”
NASA administrator Jared Isaacman, writing in his “personal capacity,” warned against speculation over the crash’s causes on X.
“The charter industry routinely hires commercial pilots very early in their careers to gain experience alongside an ATP-qualified captain before they move up to the airlines,” he wrote. “She would still have the appropriate training, qualifications, and checkouts by an FAA examiner or designee.”
He criticized “troubling” commentary on the crash.
“She was the second-in-command (SIC), and while she was empowered to point out mistakes as part of good crew resource management, she was doing her job, communicating with ATC right to the end in a terrifying situation,” Isaacman wrote. “She likely knew before many of those calls that she was going to die.”
Filgueiras started flying during high school and earned her private pilot’s license in 2023, when she was just 17 years old and a senior at West Boca Raton Community High School, CBS 12 in Florida reported that year. In addition to attending ground school, she learned firsthand from her father, who started flying for fun in 2018.
The outlet wrote that Filgueiras’ “ultimate dream” was to become a commercial airline pilot or pilot jets.
Her mother said she’d announced she wanted to be a pilot when she was 12.
“She loved the freedom,” Corteleti told the Times. “It was completely different seeing the world from the top.”