Relatives of those who were killed in a plane crash in Florida have said their loss is ‘a blow’.
A private plane crashed at around 12:50pm local time yesterday (1 November) with all nine people on board, two crew and seven passengers, being killed in the impact and subsequent explosion.
Palm Beach Post has reported that 44-year-old businessman Adam Robinson, his wife Helen, their two children, two of their friends and a nanny were the passengers on board the plane.
Adam was a founder of the tech company Retention and Helen ran the communication company, Influential PR, in addition to a pottery studio called Helen Sharp Ceramics.
Helen’s father Dudley Sharp said: “It’s quite a blow. We had a daughter, her husband and two grandchildren on the plane.”
Robinson’s father confirmed that his son had died in the plane crash but said that authorities had not formally notified him of the death.
Adam Robinson and his family have been identified by their loved ones as some of the passengers on board the private plane that crashed (YouTube/Adam Robinson)
Robinson was an entrepreneur who founded the tech company Retention and regularly shared his wisdom on how to run a successful start-up.
Another person on board the plane who has been identified by her family was 20-year-old co-pilot Nathalia Gadelha Filgueiras, whose stepfather said she’d texted her boyfriend about the weather conditions just minutes before the plane crashed.
He told the New York Post that she’d sent a message saying ‘I’ve got turbulence, I’ve got ice‘ around 10 minutes before the aircraft hit the ground.
The private plane, a Learjet 60, had contacted air traffic control in the minutes before the crash they’d said they had manageable light ice and some turbulence.
They were then told that the plane was in ‘overspeed condition’ and quickly losing altitude, the last thing controllers on the ground heard before the audio cut out was a woman’s voice shouting ‘look outside, we’re out of time‘.
In the span of around 90 seconds before contact was lost the plane over 20,000 feet, and the sudden drop had come only a matter of seconds after the plane had said they were ‘picking up precipitation’ and asked to gain altitude.
Officials have said they are investigating the crash, including how much of a factor weather conditions played.
Co-pilot Nathalia Gadelha Filgueiras has also been identified by her family (Threads/@itsnatfilg)
Tom Chapman of the NTSB explained that the plane’s crew told them the temperature outside the aircraft was -47C which they felt they could manage and they were in ‘moderate turbulence’.
He said: “Our investigators will work to thoroughly document relevant evidence and gather additional factual information,” he told the press conference.
“Our mission is to understand not just what happened but what happened and to recommend changes to prevent it from happening again.
“We will not be determining the probable cause of the crash while we’re here on scene nor will we speculate about the cause.”
Justin Crabbe, commercial pilot 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.
LADbible Group have contacted Adam Robinson’s company for comment.
Leave a Reply