Aviation attorney offers insight on crash of private jet from Austin
AUSTIN, Texas - Federal investigators are working to find out what caused a business jet from Austin to crash in Florida, killing nine people.
The jet left Austin Bergstrom International Airport at 10:37 a.m., and a few hours later, the flight ended in tragedy as the plane crashed in Palm Beach County, Florida. The plane was flying from Austin to North Eleuthera in the Bahamas.
Just before 1 p.m. ET on Sunday, a dashboard video camera captured the moment the private jet from Austin fell out of the sky. The video shows the jet went down nose-first near a shopping center in Palm Beach County, Florida.
"When you see that video, it's a jarring thing," Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said. "It was like a missile coming down and a massive explosion, debris going everywhere."
Officials said there were no survivors. It is unclear whether anyone on the ground in Florida was hurt. The plane went down in a residential area. The crash left a large debris field and caused widespread damage. Roughly 600 residents need a place to stay because of the damage on the ground.
Akemi Graham witnessed the crash.
"We heard a sound, and then we felt and heard the impact, and then we saw like a fireball, and then after the fireball, it was just like a bunch of debris and stuff kind of hitting the window and hitting the surrounding cars," Graham told ABC News.
The aircraft involved was a 22-year-old Learjet 60. Mike Slack, an aviation attorney and managing partner of Slack Davis in Austin, said a Learjet is a very aerodynamic aircraft. Some aircraft, he said, when they descend, they'll reach a terminal speed, a speed above which they won't go any higher because of drag on the airplane. The Learjet keeps accelerating, and it wants to accelerate vertically, so when there is a loss of control at altitude, a Learjet tends to go vertical and descend very fast.
"This airplane, if you just drop it from 35,000 feet, is going to tend to go vertical and descend just like a yard dart. That is the nature of this airplane," Slack said. "When it is no longer in stable control with aerodynamic forces applied on the aircraft the way they're supposed to be applied, but once all of that is disrupted and there's a stall event or a loss-of-control event, this airplane is going to go down vertically."
In a little over a minute, the plane went from 35,250 feet to 8,750 feet, a decent rate of roughly 350 feet per second, before it slammed into the ground.
"As you listen to the audio, if you heard the audio, you can tell that the pilot does not have much time to react to the situation, but essentially the aircraft becomes doomed almost immediately," Slack said.
The plane was flying from Austin to North Eleuthera in the Bahamas. The pilots were taking the most direct path, straight across Florida, but that path took them directly into intense storms.
Slack said it was essentially a solid wall of storms from the Space Coast in the north, all the way down towards the Florida Keys in the south.
"Once the pilots got too close to extricate themselves from the situation, it was too late," Slack said. "We don't know why they got so close to the severe weather as they did, and that's going to be probably the most unnerving and telling piece of information: How did the pilots and this aircraft get so close to this horrible weather?"
Slack said there is no such thing as an unavoidable weather encounter and there were opportunities for the jet to get out of the way. Slack said air traffic controllers could have given the pilots bad information and turned them toward severe weather.
"We don't know if anything like that happened here, but there could be some mitigating circumstances that help explain why the plane was there," Slack said.
The question of why the pilots did not divert around the weather or land and wait it out will be a key one for investigators.
Slack said flying over the weather was likely not an option because of the height of the storms, but they could have diverted either north or south, depending on how much fuel was on board.
Slack said the risks of flying in severe weather are well known.
"It's not unusual with intense convective weather that pilots simply choose to land their aircraft at an alternate destination and stay away from it," Slack said. "The aviation accidents that preceded this accident involving severe convective activity all tell us the same thing: You can't get close to it. If it is too severe, the consequences are too dire."
On the ground, the crash created a large crater as a sign of the speed and energy of the impact, which Slack said could make finding answers harder for investigators. The destructive forces at impact could eliminate much critical evidence and make it unavailable to investigators.
"It'll be interesting to see if they're able to recover any black boxes that may have been on the aircraft with a crater and an impact velocity such as this. It may even destroy the black boxes. We don't know that, and we don't even know if they're on there," Slack said. "This crater, when I first saw the picture of the crater, suggests an extremely high rate of descent, high-energy impact, and a virtually instantaneous destruction of everything, including the airframe of the aircraft."
So far, authorities have not identified who was onboard the jet. According to records, the plane belongs to a private company and appears to have been frequently used for charter flights. It is unclear who was using it on Sunday.
As investigators search for answers, the horrific tragedy is being felt in Austin and far beyond.
"I always say Austin is the largest small town," Slack said. "This is going to have such an emotional impact on the whole community because we tend to think of ourselves as a small town, but somebody in Austin, in all probability, chartered this flight and it took out. If they had two crew members, seven passengers, in a very horrific fashion, and it'll have repercussions throughout this community."
The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board will investigate what happened.
"Today's plane crash in Palm Beach County, Florida is a horrific tragedy," Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a statement. "Please join me in praying for the families and loved ones of those we lost."
Federal investigators will initially focus on the crash site in Florida. They will likely also look at everything that happened in Austin as well before that jet took off.
"We're looking at it from the safety standpoint," Slack said. "We want to understand why the aircraft was that close to this terrible weather, how it got there, and why."
We could learn more about the crash, the aircraft and potentially who was on board the plane when federal investigators hold a news conference in West Palm Beach on Monday.
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