In the blink of an eye, a private jet plummeting 450 feet per second nosedived into a Florida roadway, bursting into flames and killing all nine people on board .
“It was a cataclysmic plane crash,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said. “It looked like a missile going down.”
The Learjet 60 was traveling from Austin, Texas, to the Bahamas on Sunday when it plunged from the sky, leaving a massive crater near passing cars in Palm Beach County, Florida. No injuries were reported from the ground.
Authorities have not identified the nine people killed on board or what might have caused the disaster. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating and is expected to hold a news conference Monday.
Learjet crashes and erupts into flames in Florida, killing all 9 on board
Air traffic radio calls capturing the pilot’s voice describe the flight’s frantic final moments.
Before the crash, the pilot calmly reported ice accumulating on the aircraft, with an outside air temperature of -47 degrees Celsius (-52 degrees Fahrenheit), as well as moderate turbulence that bounced the plane by up to 700 feet, according to a recording of air traffic control radio calls captured by LiveATC.net .
But moments later, the pilot shouted, “Mayday, mayday!” in an increasingly panicked voice.
Audio captures moments before Learjet crash
Minutes before the crash, the pilot of the plane reported ice accumulating on the aircraft, an outside air temperature of -47 degrees Celsius, and moderate turbulence.
“We’re descending 10,000 feet per minute!” the pilot told the Miami Air Route Traffic Control Center.
“We are in an overspeed condition descending 20,000 feet per minute,” they yelled. “We’re going to crash into the ground!”
In reality, the jet plummeted 27,000 feet in one minute, just before flight tracking data was cut off, the website ADS-B Exchange shows.
Weather is emerging as a major factor in the investigation.
There were scattered storms in the area at the time, and the plane passed through a stronger storm cell a few minutes before it began descending. But it is unclear if the storm contributed to the crash.
Even in warm weather, thunderstorms generate powerful updrafts, or columns of rising air that cool rapidly. The higher the altitude, the colder the air gets. And temperatures in these updrafts can drop to as low as -100 degrees Fahrenheit at the altitudes where planes fly.
Ice on wings and other surfaces can also pose a major threat to private jets. In January 2024, the NTSB published a safety alert emphasizing the risks of in-flight icing conditions, which can cause pilots to lose control.
Ice can “make managing the airplane’s flightpath and airspeed more difficult and can prevent the airplane from maintaining level flight,” the NTSB said.
Planes are equipped with strong anti-ice systems. But in some cases, the system cannot keep up with the icing.
The plane hit the ground shortly before 1 p.m. on Military Trail, a major thoroughfare between Cresthaven Boulevard and 10th Avenue North, the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office said. The roadway was left shattered and burning wreckage dotted the crater, video from CNN affiliate WPBF showed.
“There is a lot of debris that was strewn as a result of this crash,” DeSantis said.
The scene is just miles from the airport in West Palm Beach that was recently renamed for President Donald Trump and his Mar-a-Lago resort.
About 600 people are in need of shelter because the damage on the ground is blocking the entrance to a mobile home park, said Joel Flores, Palm Beach County commissioner for District 3, who was the first county official at the scene. Residents are being sent to two shelters in the county while the site is being investigated, he said.
“I heard and felt the boom,” Andrew Mannino told CNN. “The power immediately went out and is still out.”
Mannino said he smelled the smoke and saw a large black cloud in the sky.
Sunday’s crash marked the second deadliest plane crash in the US this year, according to NTSB records. In June, 12 people died when a skydiving plane crashed in Butler, Missouri.
The catastrophe is also the deadliest crash involving a Learjet 60, according to data from the Flight Safety Foundation. In 2008, four people were killed when a Learjet 60 bound for Los Angeles crashed on takeoff from Columbia, South Carolina.
Dashcam video showing the crash will be important to investigators piecing together what happened, said Mary Schiavo, CNN aviation analyst and former inspector general for the Department of Transportation.
“That is not a controlled descent,” Schiavo told CNN’s Fredricka Whitfield Sunday. “It’s clear, whatever happened, they had lost control of the plane.”
The steep descent could have forced parts of the plane to break off and the flight data recorder could have been destroyed in the explosion, she added.
It’s not clear if the plane had a cockpit voice recorder on board, but FAA regulations require jet aircraft with more than one engine to carry a voice recorder if they are flown for hire.
The plane is registered to an LLC in Delaware, according to FAA records, and is listed as available for charter online.
CNN’s Angela Fritz and Alexandra Skores contributed to this report.
