Young Pilot’s Harrowing Last Words Revealed Before Florida Plane Crash That Killed All on Board

“Mayday! Mayday! We’re descending 10,000 feet per minute!” the copilot of the private plane that crashed into a Florida neighborhood on Sunday, November 1, told air traffic controllers in their final moments. All nine people aboard the plane died.

“We are in an overspeed condition descending 20,000 feet per minute,” the pilot told the Miami Air Route Traffic Control Center in audio shared by the New York Post, adding seconds later, per the outlet, “We’re going to crash into the ground!”

A second voice was heard reciting what appeared to be the Lord’s Prayer, per the paper, with audio capturing the line, “Hallowed be thy name.” Citing flight-tracking website Flightradar24, USA Today reported the plane at one point had a vertical descent rate exceeding 32,000 feet per minute.

The last words heard in the cockpit, per the New York Post, were the copilot shouting, “Holy [expletive], we’re out of time!”

The situation on board appeared to deteriorate quickly as, less than a minute before the crash, the copilot reported they were dealing with moderate turbulence, but it was “light, clear ice that is manageable,” per audio shared by CNN.

According to a report by the New York Post on Monday, November 2, the voice heard was 20-year-old co-pilot Nathalia Gadelha Filgueiras, who had gotten her pilot’s license before her driver’s license when she was 17 years old and had been working as a commercial pilot for nine months. Her 21st birthday was coming up in January, her mother told the newspaper.

Shortly before 1 p.m., the Learjet 60 crashed into the roadway near the entrance to the Greenacres mobile home community in an enormous fireball captured by a passing driver in video shared by CNN. The private business plane had been en route to the Bahamas after departing from Austin, Texas, per the outlet.

“It was a cataclysmic plane crash. It looked like a missile going down. It left a big crater on the side of the road,” said Florida governor Ron DeSantis after the crash, per CNN and the Daily Beast. “There is a lot of debris that was strewn as a result.”

It has not yet been determined what led to the crash.

While no injuries were reported on the ground, the crash led to 600 people being evacuated from the mobile home park, according to Joel Flores, Palm Beach County commissioner for District 3, who CNN reported was the first county official to arrive at the scene. They are being relocated to two county shelters while the crash site is investigated, according to Flores.