By David Shepardson<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON, Nov 2 (Reuters) – The National Transportation Safety Board said on Monday a Learjet 60 that crashed on Sunday in a \u200cresidential area in Palm Beach County, Florida, killing all nine people on \u200cboard, may have broken up before hitting the ground at high speed.<\/p>\n
The private Bombardier-made jet had \u200btaken off from Austin, Texas, and was headed to the Bahamas. Heavy rainfall and thunderstorms were occurring in the area where it went down.<\/p>\n
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, posting on X, highlighted the harrowing experience of those on the aircraft, including the 20-year-old \u200ccopilot.<\/p>\n
“She was doing her job, \u2060communicating with (air traffic control) right to the end in a terrifying situation,” Isaacman wrote. “She likely knew before many of those calls \u2060that she was going to die.”<\/p>\n
A jet can break up in midair at very high rates of descent, subjecting passengers to extreme physical forces.<\/p>\n
Videos on social media showed the \u200bjet slamming \u200binto the ground next to a road \u200band exploding. The pilots reported \u200cice at 35,000 feet (10,668 m) but then reported the plane was descending at a rate of 10,000 feet per minute, which quickly increased to 22,000 feet per minute.<\/p>\n
“The weather conditions are a major focus of the investigation,” NTSB board member Tom Chapman said. Maintenance records indicate a cockpit voice recorder was installed on the \u200cjet, but investigators do not know whether it \u200bwas still on board, he added.<\/p>\n
The crash left \u200ba massive crater by the road \u200bnear the entrance to a mobile home park, which was \u200cpartially filled with water because of \u200bthe severe storms, Chapman \u200bsaid.<\/p>\n
“We do have some evidence that there was some breakup of the aircraft before impact,” he said. “We may find parts of the aircraft some distance \u200baway from the actual \u200cimpact site.”<\/p>\n
TMZ identified the passengers as a Texas tech entrepreneur and his \u200bfamily, a nanny and two close friends, along with two pilots.<\/p>\n
(Reporting \u200bby David Shepardson; Editing by Edmund Klamann)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By David Shepardson WASHINGTON, Nov 2 (Reuters) – The National Transportation Safety Board said on Monday a Learjet…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":445589,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-445588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=445588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445588\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/445589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=445588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=445588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=445588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}