The pilot of the Florida Learjet that crashed on 1 November 2026 has now been identified by her family as 20-year-old Nathalia Gadelha, one of the pilots on board the Learjet 60 that departed Austin, Texas, for the Bahamas and crashed near Cresthaven, Florida. US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy confirmed all nine people aboard died. This is a development since the first reports, which said the victims’ identities had not yet been publicly released.
Gadelha was raised in Palm Beach County and began flight lessons in 2020 with her father’s encouragement. She earned her private pilot’s licence at 17 in 2023, which drew local attention at the time — the detail behind the headline’s claim that she could fly before she could get her own driver’s licence.
The article also says recordings from the flight reportedly captured a female voice warning of rapid descent and a steep bank. That detail comes with an important caveat: the speaker’s identity was not independently established, so the recording is reported, not confirmed, as her voice. Florida’s governor said there were no immediate reports of harm on the ground.
Two notes on the source itself: its text appears truncated, with paragraphs cutting off mid-word and mid-sentence, and it carries no author name or publication date. What it does establish is the identification itself — a 20-year-old pilot, from Palm Beach County, whose family has now named her among the nine lost in the crash.
