'We're Out of Time': The Learjet Pilot's Final Distress Calls Emerge — Descending at 20,000 Feet Per Minute
First came manageable ice and moderate turbulence at 35,000 feet. Then, in under a minute, a mayday, an overspeed descent and a 60-degree bank. The recordings are now the center of the investigation into the crash that killed nine.
The final minute of the Learjet 60's flight is now a matter of record. Air traffic control recordings reviewed in the coverage published Monday morning trace a sequence that begins routinely — a crew reporting manageable ice and moderate turbulence at 35,000 feet, with an outside air temperature of minus 47 degrees — and then collapses. The crew reported descending through 8,000 feet and called mayday, reporting a descent of 10,000 feet per minute, then declared an emergency: an overspeed condition, descending at 20,000 feet per minute, and the words, 'We're going to crash into the ground.'
A later transmission reported the jet descending at 22,000 feet per minute and banking 60 degrees. Flight-tracking data cited in the coverage shows the aircraft lost about 27,000 feet in about one minute, with descent rates reported as high as 30,000 feet per minute — far beyond the jet's design limits. The Bahamas-bound aircraft, out of Austin, had requested a climb of 2,000 feet shortly before the dive began. It came down at about 12:50 p.m. Sunday near Military Trail and 10th Avenue North in Palm Beach County; Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who visited the scene, described the jet as looking like a missile going down and the impact as leaving a big crater. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has confirmed all nine people aboard were killed; no one on the ground was reported killed.
What the recordings do not do is establish a cause. Icing and the weather the crew described are lines of inquiry for the National Transportation Safety Board, which leads the investigation with the Federal Aviation Administration — neither has been established as the cause, and this desk reports them only as the questions investigators will work. The NTSB go-team's arrival and a news conference expected today were staged by this desk in the previous cycle; the recordings are Monday's new file, and what investigators say about them is the next one.
