INVESTIGATORS are still probing the mystery of the private jet which crashed to the ground, killing nine people in Florida last week.
Bloodcurdling audio revealed the pilot screaming “holy f**k, we’re out of time” before the aircraft nosedived into the road in Palm Beach County. Four unanswered questions remain after the terrifying crash.
But the Learjet smashed into the road at hundreds of miles per hour, with witnesses describing it as “like a missile”.
Parts of the plane were found nearly four miles away from the crash site.
Not all jets carry a black box, made up of a cockpit voice recorder and a flight data recorder.
The learjet was fitted with a cockpit voice recorder, National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) member Tom Chapman confirmed at a press conference.
Yet authorities don’t know for sure if it was still on board at the time of the crash, because private jets as small as the Learjet aren’t legally mandated to carry one.
And even if it was still on the jet, debris from the aircraft smashed into thousands of tiny parts.
Black boxes are design to protect recordings against serious impact and fire, but finding it at all remains a huge challenge for investigators.
How did the tail break off?
A key part of the plane – most of the left elevator, part of the jet’s tail – was found nearly four miles from the crash site.
Investigators said this confirmed that the jet was breaking apart before it smashed into the road.
The left elevator controls the angle of the front of the plane, and without it it would have been impossible for a pilot to pull out of the steep nosedive that saw the Learjet head straight for the ground.
Former NTSB member John Goglia said flight tracking data showed the jet levelling off for around eight seconds before it nosedived.
He explained that the key tail pieces may well have broken off when the jet tried to pull up sharply to prevent the crash.
Goglia said: “He apparently levelled off for brief moments at 8,000ft and to accomplish that he likely overstressed the tail and the horizontal stabilizer separated from the airplane.”
Ice had began forming on the plane amid moderate turbulence.
The flight crew requested permission to climb from 35,000 feet to 37,000 feet shortly before declaring an emergency, and suddenly plunging to the ground.
Did the plane fall into a coffin corner?
One chilling theory is that the Learjet could have got caught in a dangerous situation known as a “coffin corner”.
Former pilot Martin Varsavsky suggested the jet could have got caught while attempting to climb above two storm systems.
He said that the storms were clearly visible on the radar imagery, and that light jets give dangerous weather a wide berth rather than flying through it.
Varsavsky wrote on X: “What storms do by changing the outside temperature is that airplanes can no longer stay aloft at the same speed.
“It’s called the coffin corner. Or they become very difficult to keep under control.”
In a coffin corner, an aircraft’s minimum and maximum safe speeds draw dangerously close to each other.
Pilots then have a tiny safe margin to operate in, meaning that flying slightly too fast or too slow can quickly become fatal.
Could the pilots have avoided the storm?
]Veteran pilot Justin Crabbe believes a series of crucial decisions in the cockpit may have contributed to the tragedy, including a desperate attempt to climb above the storm.
Crabbe, CEO of charter-flight booking platform Jettly, told the New York Post that the pilots should have avoided the storm altogether.
“They certainly should have gone around [the storm],” he said.
Air traffic control had reportedly given the crew permission to change course to avoid the dangerous conditions.
But Crabbe suggested the pilots may have fallen victim to a phenomenon known as “get-there-itis” – when pressure to reach a destination clouds a pilot’s judgment.
The expert stressed that he did not know why the crew continued through the storm.
