The father of the 20-year-old co-pilot who died alongside eight other people in a Florida Learjet crash has revealed that he has repeatedly listened to her final radio transmissions, searching for answers while feeling proud of how she handled the emergency.
Allan Filgueiras, a pilot who helped teach his daughter, Nathalia Gadelha Filgueiras, how to fly, said he was amazed by her courage as the aircraft plunged towards the ground on Sunday.
“I wanted to be by her side. Inside the plane, to help,” he said during a news conference, frequently struggling to hold back his tears.
“She showed me what it is to be a hero,” he continued. “Because once you see that coming, a lot of the big boys — military or whatever — they can’t handle. And she was the one over there to the last minute fighting.”
Nathalia can initially be heard calmly informing air traffic control about ice accumulating on the aircraft as it flew into a thunderstorm.
Severe turbulence caused the plane to move up and down by approximately 700 feet (200 meters). However, the situation quickly deteriorated as the aircraft began descending at an extraordinary speed.
“Declare an emergency 722-Bravo-Delta. We are in an overspeed condition descending 20,000 feet per minute!” she reported.
Her father and aviation safety specialists have praised her composure as she continued providing updates over the radio, despite the increasingly dangerous situation.
The captain, 55-year-old Jeff Gregory, is believed to have been operating the controls.
“For the family — it’s like having the heart torn from my chest,” Allan Filgueiras said in Spanish. “I have to find a way to go on living.”
The family has also responded to online criticism questioning whether Nathalia had sufficient experience to serve in the cockpit of a high-performance business jet.
She had accumulated more than 1,300 flight hours and completed extensive training to obtain her commercial pilot’s licence and Learjet certification.
Her father’s attorney, Stuart Grossman, explained that the news conference was intended to “preserve not just her memory, but her reputation.”
“She was at the top of her class in everything that she did, and she was perfectly qualified to be the co-pilot on this flight, despite her tender years,” Grossman said.
He also noted that there were no immediate plans to file a lawsuit.
The National Transportation Safety Board has not yet established what caused the crash.
Investigators determined that the Learjet exceeded its design limits as it descended. Pieces of the aircraft’s tail were discovered several miles from the crash site, where the plane left a deep crater near the edge of a road.
Investigators were still searching the surrounding area on Friday after locating part of an engine the previous day. The cockpit voice recorder had not yet been recovered.
Allan Filgueiras recalled helping his daughter begin her aviation journey when he first took her flying at just 12 years old.
After eventually securing a job as a pilot, Nathalia told him she could hardly believe she was being paid to do something she loved so much.
“It was her happiest moment, to fly,” he said.
Her mentor and flight instructor, Chris Kirk, also praised her dedication and determination, explaining that she earned her position through years of hard work and long training hours.
During her Learjet 60 check ride in March, the examiner was reportedly so impressed with her performance that he believed she had more than 5,000 hours of flight experience, nearly four times the amount she had actually recorded.
Kirk said her professionalism was also apparent in her final radio transmissions, which provided investigators with important information about the aircraft’s condition.
He added that many members of the military special forces he had worked with might have struggled to remain composed in a similarly difficult situation.
“This was an incredible human being,” Kirk said, “who did a job that very few people would have been able to do under a duress that’s unimaginable.”
Retired airline pilot John Cox also discussed Nathalia’s qualifications earlier in the week, explaining that his own professional aviation career had started in a similar way when he began flying commercially at 19.
He said Nathalia had accomplished something significant by earning a co-pilot position on a Learjet.
“To be in the right seat of a Lear 60, she had to impress somebody, because that’s a good ride. I mean, that’s great. I know she loved it,” said Cox, who now operates Safety Operating Systems, an aviation consulting company.
The other victims of the crash included technology entrepreneur Adam Robinson, his wife, Helen Sharp, and their two young children, according to relatives.
The family’s nanny, Ana María Ramírez Cetina, also lost her life.
The remaining victims were identified as Rachael Reed and Charmi Fehr, who owned the Arca Boutique Hotel in Honduras.
