I’m not sure about you, but, good grief, the amount of Conspiracy Theories going on on social media is insane, especially when we do not know much of anything
That’s just a taste, as I’m sure you’ve seen. You’re looking at something traveling in excess of 500 knots at a ballistic angle on dashcams which are mostly 720p or 1080p at maybe 60fps. Here’s what we actually know
(Newsmax) 1. The Learjet plunged from 35,000 feet in a matter of minutes.
2. Ice was accumulating on the aircraft before the emergency. (very important)
3. The aircraft entered an extraordinary overspeed condition. (at the end it was about 20K feet per second down)
4. The NTSB says the aircraft may have started breaking apart before impact.
5. A powerful thunderstorm is a major focus of the investigation. (important)
6. Experts disagree about whether ice or turbulence was the bigger danger.
7. Questions are emerging about what the pilots could have done differently.
8. The 20-year-old co-pilot’s youth and experience are attracting attention.
9. The pilot in command was identified as Jeff Gregory, 55.
10. The seven passengers included an Austin entrepreneur and his young family.
11. Investigators are looking for the cockpit voice recorder. (is it there? And was there a Flight Data Recorder (FDR)?)
12. The crash also injured someone on the ground and displaced residents.
I’m not a pilot, but, I’ve watched Air Disasters from Smithsonian multiple times, as well as Mayday, the original Canadian production. There are essentially three things involved in a plane crash: people, mechanics, and/or weather. What roles did they play? Could the pilot and copilot done something different? A lot are going after Nathalia Gadelha Filgueiras, 20 years old, who had 1,300 hours of flight time, but, we do not know how much in the Learjet 60. There are lots of conspiracy theories about her, and, lots of sexism. You know me, I am not squishy about all that kinds of stuff, but, there comes a point where it is sexism. Like now, since no one knows truly what happened.
Though, one thing concerns me a bit: she was apparently texting her boyfriend, who’s also a pilot, about the weather and icing just 10 minutes before the accident. Was that the only text? If the weather was that bad she should have been monitoring and doing copilot stuff, not texting. Little distractions can cause big problems. Little distractions have caused pilots to fail to lower the flaps for takeoff, resulting in crashes. See Delta Air Lines Flight 1141 (1988), Spanair Flight 5022 (2008), and LAPA Flight 3142 (1999), among others.
At this point, we know a plane crashed, there was heavy bad weather over Florida. It wasn’t a missile strike on the plane, it wasn’t a missile or giant drone that crashed. A plane that crashes at that speed is obliterated, and creates that type of hole. This has happened many. Times. I remember one Air Disasters episode where a commercial prop plane crashed at a high speed, almost vertical angle, in a field and it was obliterated into tiny pieces. And now we wait for the NTSB investigation, which will take time. And their reports do not spare anyone. They have always been The Facts.
What a horrible tragedy. The passengers who died in the crash are Adam Robinson and Helen Sharp, a couple from Austin, and their two young children, Emma, 4, and Charlie, 2; Rachael Reed, Charmi Fehr and Anita Maria Cetina. The pilot, Jeff Gregory, 55, and co-pilot, Nathalia Filgueiras, 20.
The 20 year old girl with a suspect “pedigree” (i.e., “Nathalia Gadelha Filgueiras”) as co-pilot has been blamed in social media.
She was a licensed pilot. She maintained radio contact with the ground during the final minute knowing she was about to die.
“722 Bravo Delta, we’re descending 8000 Mayday, Mayday, we’re descending 10,000 ft per minute.”
“Declare an emergency 722 Bravo Delta, we are in an overspeed condition descending 20,000 feet per minute.”
The storm was reported to extend up to over 48,000 feet with massive atmospheric instability and upward wind velocities that can exceed 100 mph; routinely push past 60,000 feet in tropical environments; FAA guidelines mandate that aircraft maintain a minimum lateral separation of 20 nautical miles.