The 20-year-old co-pilot who tragically died in the private jet crash last weekend had shared content on her social media showing exactly what it was like in the cockpit.
Nathalia Filgueiras, who received her pilot license while she was still a senior in high school, was one of nine who lost their lives in the Learjet 60 flight from Texas to the Bahamas on Sunday (1 November).
Pieces of the aircraft were believed to have fallen away before it nosedived and crashed into a Florida highway, killing everyone on board.
The social media page of Filgueiras has since received millions of views following her passing, and one of her videos showed off what a takeoff inside the Learjet 60 looked like.
Take a look at the video below:
It would be wrong to speculate that anything was wrong with the plane, with experts so far suggesting that the uptick in precipitation, as well as icing and turbulence, will have likely played a significant part in the crash.
Justin Crabbe, commercial pilot and CEO at Jettly, told LADbible that ice on the wings of a plane ‘can significantly affect how an aircraft flies and how turbulence can also impact an aircraft’.
He explained that it ‘changes the shape of the wings, reduces lift, increases drag and can make the aircraft much more difficult to control’, and could possibly have made a turbulent situation worse.
Filgueiras’ mother, Camila Corteleti, confirmed to US media that her daughter had died in the fireball.
Corteleti told the New York Times: “She loved the freedom. It was completely different seeing the world from the top.”
The young co-pilot, who has been praised for her clear communication with air traffic control in her final moments, when she would have likely known that she would die from the crash, also previously spoke to the media after receiving her license when she was just a teenager.
Nathalia shared pictures of herself aboard jets (itsnatfilg/Threads)
“I like being different than everyone,” she told CBS12 in 2023. “Some people think that it’s weird that I can fly planes, but I can’t drive a car, I mean I can but, a lot of people think it’s funny.”
Filgueiras also sent a heartbreaking final message to her boyfriend before the crash, where she discussed the difficult weather conditions that they were battling.
Her stepfather Thiago Corteleti told the New York Post: “She texted her boyfriend, I think, at 12:40 pm and the accident was at 12:50 pm.
“She just said, ‘I’ve got turbulence, I’ve got ice.”
Other experts have theorised that something ‘catastrophic’ must have happened for the pilots to lose control of the aircraft, which was captured on social media hurtling into the highway before exploding on impact.
55-year-old Jeffrey Gregory has been identified as the pilot of the aircraft, while a joint statement named Adam Robinson, his wife Helen Sharp, and their two children – Emma, four, and Charlie, two – Rachael Reed and Charmi Fehr, and Anita Maria Cetina as the victims.
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