During a briefing on Tuesday, National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) member Tom Chapman revealed that search teams recovered portions of the aircraft’s left horizontal stabilizer elevator broken into three pieces scattered between 1.3 and 3.8 miles from the crash site. The elevator controls the aircraft’s pitch, allowing pilots to guide the nose up or down. Chapman explained that without this critical assembly intact, the flight crew would have had no mechanical means to pull the business jet out of its steep, high-speed terminal dive.
The twin-engine jet, which originated in Austin, Texas, was bound for the Bahamas when it plunged violently out of the sky on Sunday, carving a massive crater along a roadway and killing all nine people aboard—including seven passengers and two pilots. The fiery ground explosion caused widespread debris across neighboring residential communities, prompting the evacuation and temporary sheltering of roughly 600 residents.
Air traffic control audio captured harrowing transmissions from co-pilot Nathalia Gadelha Filgueiras in the flight’s final moments. She reported rapid ice accumulation at cruising altitude alongside severe turbulence that battered the plane vertically by over 700 feet. Soon after, the aircraft entered an unrecoverable dive exceeding 20,000 feet per minute before communication cut off.
Chapman cautioned that while locating the elevator miles away confirms the plane began disintegrating in flight, investigators have not yet determined whether aerodynamic stresses during the dive caused the structural failure or if an initial midair separation triggered the loss of control. Severe weather, including towering thunderstorms in the vicinity reaching up to 45,000 feet, remains a primary focus.
A preliminary NTSB report is expected within 30 days, while a conclusive determination of probable cause will take over a year.
Sources Used
- Associated Press: Parts of plane that crashed in Florida found as far as 3.8 miles from the site of impact: official
- PBS NewsHour: Parts of jet’s tail found more than a mile from plane crash site in South Florida, official says
- CBS News Miami: Pieces of jet that crashed in Palm Beach County found miles away from impact site, NTSB says
- Associated Press: Parts of a Learjet may have broken off midair before Florida crash that killed 9, investigators say
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