Father of Young Co-Pilot Killed in Florida Jet Crash Says Recordings Show She 'Fought' to the End

Five days after a chartered jet broke apart over a Palm Beach County neighborhood and killed everyone aboard, the father of the plane's 20-year-old co-pilot spoke publicly for the first time on Friday, describing what he has heard, again and again, in the radio transmissions she sent in the seconds before the crash.

Allan Filgueiras, himself a private pilot, said he has replayed the air traffic control recordings of his daughter, Nathalia Gadelha Filgueiras, searching for an explanation for why the Learjet 60 she was co-piloting plunged into a residential stretch of Greenacres, Florida, on the afternoon of Nov. 1. He has not found one. What he hears instead, he told reporters at a news conference in Coral Gables, is a young woman trying to save the aircraft until there was nothing left to try.

"She was gifted, and my soulmate," Filgueiras said of his daughter, according to West Palm Beach's WPTV, which was at the briefing. "She showed me what it is to be a hero."

A Father's First Public Words

The crash killed all nine people aboard: the captain, Jeff Gregory, 55, of Gilbertsville, Pennsylvania; Filgueiras, of Boca Raton; and seven passengers, including a family of four and the woman who cared for the couple's two young children. No one on the ground was hurt, though the jet's disintegration scattered debris across homes, yards and at least one nearby mobile home community.

Filgueiras appeared alongside the family's attorney, Stuart Z. Grossman of the Miami-area firm Grossman Roth Yaffa Cohen, who said the family is not yet assigning blame and has not filed suit. "We're not making allegations against anybody at this time," Grossman said, adding that the family wants to let the National Transportation Safety Board finish its work. "The purpose of this is to preserve not just her memory but her reputation."

Her father said he introduced her to flying when she was about 12 years old, and that in time the roles reversed. According to NBC News, which also attended the briefing, Filgueiras said his daughter described flying as the job she was lucky enough to be paid to love, and that he wished he had been in the cockpit beside her. Nathalia earned a private pilot certificate while still a student in a Palm Beach County School District aviation program — one entry point into the path the Federal Aviation Administration lays out for new pilots — and went on to build the hours and training needed for the kind of commercial, multi-engine credential required of a paid co-pilot, a process governed by the FAA's airmen certification rules. Grossman said she was fully qualified for the co-pilot role despite her age, and that her flight instructors would back that up.

"We're not making allegations against anybody at this time. The purpose of this is to preserve not just her memory but her reputation." — Stuart Z. Grossman, attorney for the Filgueiras family

What Investigators Have Found So Far

The jet, operated by the charter company Aurora Aviation under the name Upper Jets, had taken off from Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in Texas at about 10:37 a.m. and was bound for North Eleuthera, Bahamas. Around 12:47 p.m., its crew radioed air traffic control that they were picking up light clear ice and moderate turbulence near 35,000 feet and asked to climb higher. Within half a minute, according to accounts of the exchange relayed by investigators, the aircraft reported an overspeed condition and a rapid descent, followed by a mayday call.

The National Transportation Safety Board's case file on the accident, opened under the designation ERA27MA026, says the agency dispatched a full "go-team" of roughly 20 investigators and that the inquiry remains active. At a briefing described by the Boston Globe, NTSB board member Tom Chapman said investigators had "some indication that the aircraft was breaking up before impact," and that examining weather conditions at altitude would be a major focus. Crews have recovered part of one engine from the crater left at the crash site and found other debris as far as 3.8 miles away; maintenance logs show the jet had a cockpit voice recorder installed, though officials have not said whether it was recovered. The board has not determined a cause and is not expected to issue even a preliminary report for roughly two weeks.

Nine Lives, a Neighborhood Upended

Besides Gregory and Filgueiras, the passengers killed were identified by relatives as Adam Robinson and Helen Sharp, described by family as devoted parents; their children, Emma, 4, and Charlie, 2; the children's caregiver, Anita Maria Cetina; and two friends of the family, Rachael Reed and Charmi Fehr. East Coast Jets, where Gregory had briefly worked years earlier, said in a statement that it was "deeply saddened" by his death, and the jet's manufacturer, Bombardier, said it was cooperating with investigators.

The crash's force displaced roughly 600 residents of a mobile home community near the impact site, who were moved into a county shelter and, for some, into hotel rooms while officials assessed structural damage. A nearby high school, John I. Leonard, closed for a day as crews worked the scene, and the stretch of South Military Trail that absorbed the brunt of the wreckage remained shut for days afterward. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, touring the debris field soon after the crash, described the jet's descent as looking "like a missile coming down."

An Investigation With No Conclusions Yet

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy confirmed within hours of the crash that all nine aboard had died, calling it "a horrific tragedy" and saying the Federal Aviation Administration would support the NTSB's work. Upper Jets said in a statement that it was fully cooperating with investigators and pledged to support the victims' families; the company has not addressed questions about the plane's maintenance history or the crew's decision to fly through reported icing.

For now, the Filgueiras family's public statements have stopped short of attributing fault. Grossman said the family is waiting on investigators rather than rushing toward litigation, even as they retain lawyers to protect the family's interests. Her father, for his part, said he intends to carry his daughter's memory forward rather than dwell on the unanswered question of what went wrong in the final seconds over Greenacres. He said his daughter would not want to see him "falling apart," and that he has resolved to make her proud.