Around 12:50 on a Sunday afternoon, a Learjet 60 travelling from Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in Texas to North Eleuthera Airport in the Bahamas lost altitude over Palm Beach, Florida, made a sharp right turn, nosedived and crashed onto a highway in a neighbourhood, erupting in a fireball that left a huge crater in the road and debris scattered around it. According to ABC News and FAA data cited in the report, the jet fell from 35,250 feet to 8,750 feet in just over a minute — roughly 350 feet per second. Everyone on board died.
The victims have now been identified. They include tech entrepreneur Adam Robinson — founder and chief executive of RB2B and Retention.com and chief executive of Moltsets, who had earlier worked at Lehman Brothers and Barclays — his wife Helen Sharp, an artist, and their two young children. Also on board were family friends Rachael Reed and Charmi Fehr, the family’s nanny Anita Maria Apellido Cetina and her partner, whom the article does not name, along with pilot Jeff Gregory, 55, and co-pilot Nathalia G. Filgueiras, 20, who earned her pilot’s licence at 17 and learned to fly from her pilot father.
The families released a joint statement confirming the passenger group, and the tributes since have been heartbreaking. Reed and Fehr were remembered as full of joy and adventure, who loved their people fiercely and without hesitation. A statement about Cetina said she cared for the children with tenderness and devotion, was truly part of the family, and left behind a legacy of unconditional love and devotion. Helen Sharp’s father told The Palm Beach Post that the family had lost a daughter, her husband and two grandchildren, calling it quite a blow, while fellow entrepreneur Jesse Ouellette posted a LinkedIn tribute — and Robinson’s final LinkedIn post, published that same Sunday, was about a debate he and Ouellette had planned for the following week. East Coast Jets, where Gregory used to work, also issued a statement mourning its former captain.
Investigators are still working to establish what caused the crash, and no cause has been confirmed. The NTSB is examining ice, turbulence and possible human error, and at a Monday news conference board member Tom Chapman said weather is a major focus, that the plane may have broken up before hitting the ground at high speed, and that the crater had partially filled with water from a severe storm. Aviation attorney Mike Slack, a licensed pilot and former NASA aerospace engineer, told CBS Austin after reviewing air-traffic-control audio that the pilot was clearly concerned, was seeking permission to climb, and was encountering weather beyond the aircraft’s capability — saying the probabilities favour a weather-induced event. For now, that remains an expert assessment, not a finding.
