The pilot of a business jet that crashed in Florida, killing all nine people aboard, was a longtime aviator, husband and father from the Philadelphia suburbs, according to a colleague who organized an online fundraiser for his family and social media posts from people who knew him.<\/p>\n
Jeff Gregory, 55, was one of two crew members in the cockpit of the Bahamas-bound Learjet 60 as it encountered bad weather and slammed into the ground Sunday afternoon in Greenacres, about 7 miles (11 kilometers) southwest of West Palm Beach. <\/p>\n
As the plane plunged, a man\u2019s voice could be heard reciting the Lord\u2019s Prayer in the background of the copilot\u2019s final radio transmissions to air traffic control. Friends are convinced it was Gregory, a devout Christian.<\/p>\n
A federal investigator said Monday that parts of the jet likely started to break off before it struck the ground. Gregory\u2019s co-pilot, 20-year-old Nathalia Gadelha Filgueiras, told air traffic controllers that ice was accumulating on the plane and that severe turbulence had thrown it up and down by more than 700 feet (210 meters).<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to die!\u201d she said with a scream before the jet slammed into the ground and erupted in a fireball.<\/p>\n
Thomas Noetzel, the director of operations at the company that operated the flight, Upper Jets, organized an online fundraiser to support Gregory\u2019s wife and children.<\/p>\n
Gregory was a close, personal friend and \u201cknowing him has made me a better person,\u201d Noetzel wrote on the fundraising website GoFundMe.<\/p>\n
\u201cJeff was a devoted, conscientious, and deeply faithful man who had a genuine passion for flying and a strong love for the Lord ,\u201d Noetzel\u2019s father, Walter, posted on Facebook. \u201cHis journey on earth may have ended, but I like to think he is now flying among the angels, soaring peacefully in the presence of our Lord.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gregory held airline transport pilot and flight instructor certificates, according to Federal Aviation Administration records. He lived in Gilbertsville, about 35 miles (56 kilometers) northwest of Philadelphia, and had previously worked for a charter company based in Allentown, Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are deeply saddened to learn that Captain Jeff Gregory was among those who lost their lives,\u201d said April Honnen, the director of charter sales for East Coast Jets, Inc., where he worked in 2016 and 2017. \u201cOur prayers go out to Jeff\u2019s family, his fellow crew member, the passengers and everyone affected by this heart breaking tragedy.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Learjet hit the ground with enough force to create a crater before bursting into flames. The impact scattered plane fragments over a large area. <\/p>\n
Images of the moment just before the aircraft made impact appear to show the horizontal stabilizer missing from the tail. About 600 nearby residents remain displaced, but only one injury was reported on the ground.<\/p>\n
The plane took off from Austin, Texas. The victims included technology entrepreneur Adam Robinson, his wife, Helen Sharp, and their two young children, relatives said.<\/p>\n
Filgueiras’ stepfather, Thiago Corteleti, told the New York Post that she texted her boyfriend about 10 minutes before the crash, telling him: \u201cI\u2019ve got turbulence, I\u2019ve got ice.\u201d<\/p>\n
The texts were sent before the situation became critical. In the last two minutes of the flight, Filgueiras shifted from calmly communicating with air traffic controllers to calling out terrifying updates as the plane plummeted.<\/p>\n
The FAA prohibits commercial airline pilots from using cellphones at any point during a flight. The rules aren\u2019t as strict for pilots of charter flights; they are not supposed to use cellphones during critical phases of flight, such as takeoffs and landings, but are allowed while cruising at altitude unless their company or pilot in command specifically bans it.<\/p>\n
Tom Chapman, a National Transportation Safety Board member, said Monday that weather would be a key focus of the investigation. A preliminary report describing what happened will be released in about a month, but it will likely take more than a year to determine the cause of the crash.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The pilot of a business jet that crashed in Florida, killing all nine people aboard, was a longtime…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":446399,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-446398","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\/446398","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=446398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446398\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/446399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=446398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=446398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}