Several critical human errors may have contributed to Sunday’s devastating Learjet crash in Florida, which killed all nine people aboard, aviation experts said.
The $2 million aircraft was flying from Texas to the Bahamas when it entered a powerful storm, apparently stalled at an altitude of between 35,000 and 37,000 feet, and began plunging toward the ground. It crashed and erupted into a fireball near a trailer park in Palm Beach County.
Investigators have not yet determined what caused the disaster. But aviation expert Justin Crabbe told The Post that the pilots may have made a dangerous decision by continuing toward the storm before attempting a maneuver that could have worsened the situation.
“They certainly should have gone around [the storm],” said Crabbe, a veteran pilot and CEO of Jettly, a charter-flight booking platform that had the Learjet 60 involved in Sunday’s crash listed on its site.
“[Air-traffic control] gave them the flexibility to deviate around that weather,” he said.
Crabbe said he could not explain why the pilots continued through the storm, but suggested they may have been eager to reach their destination in the Bahamas. The aircraft was carrying two pilots and seven passengers: millionaire tech entrepreneur Adam Robinson, his wife, their two young children, two adult friends and the family’s nanny.
“It’s a theory called ‘get-there-itis,’ and flight schools teach you this very early on,” Crabbe said.
“It’s a risk factor. You have to sit back as a pilot and understand what is pushing you to do this trip, this maneuver, this journey in a way that may compromise the safety of the flight.”
The jet’s co-pilot, 20-year-old Nathalia Filgueiras, requested and received clearance to climb from 35,000 feet to 37,000 feet after reporting subzero temperatures outside the aircraft and ice forming on its fuselage.
Ice can severely disrupt an aircraft’s performance by changing the flow of air over its wings and reducing lift. Although many aircraft, including the Learjet involved in the crash, are equipped with de-icing systems, ice can accumulate rapidly in severe conditions.
Crabbe said the attempt to climb out of the storm may ultimately have placed the aircraft in even greater danger.
“They tried to ascend to get to clearer air, which may have been one of the contributing factors toward accelerating that stall,” he told The Post.
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As an aircraft’s nose rises, the angle of attack—the angle at which the wings meet the air moving toward them—increases. When ice coats the wings, they must work harder to generate lift, meaning the aircraft can stall at a lower angle than it normally would.
At that point, Crabbe said, the pilots may have faced two dangerous choices: climb and risk worsening the stall, or descend deeper into the storm and potentially accumulate even more ice.
He also emphasized the intense pressure the pilots would have been experiencing in the cockpit.
“It’s extremely easy to say this from the ground and from a position of safety,” Crabbe said of the decisions confronting the crew.
The crash claimed the lives of 44-year-old entrepreneur Adam Robinson; his wife, Helen; their children, Emma, 4, and Charlie, 2; friends Rachael Reed and Charmi Fehr; and nanny Anita Maria Apellido Cetina.
Even if the Learjet had completed its emergency climb, it may not have escaped the threat. NOAA data showed that the unusual convective storm system extended to nearly 50,000 feet.
“This was kind of the perfect storm of trouble,” said aviation lawyer Zachary S. Gorwitz of Podhurst Orseck, a firm that investigates and litigates aircraft crash cases.
He said climbing above the storm could have increased the aircraft’s angle of attack and aggravated—or triggered—a stall on one or both wings.
“You had turbulence. You had icing. You had precipitation. And you had incredibly tall thunderstorms that seem to have formed very quickly,” Orseck told The Post.
Once the plane started nose-diving, there would have been little the pilots could do — especially as the aircraft seems to have started breaking apart before it hit the ground.
“At that point, I’m sure the pilot was trying to pull back on the controls and get the nose up, but I’m sure at that speed and that angle, it just wasn’t possible,” Gorwitz said.
Whatever the cause or causes of the crash, he said he doubts they include a young, inexperienced co-pilot — even though the terrified Filguerias was the one speaking to air-traffic control.
“The fact that this 20 year co-pilot was the one on the radio suggests the pilot was at the controls,” he said.