A Texas technology entrepreneur, his wife and their two young children were among the nine people killed when a private Learjet 60 plunged almost vertically into a residential neighbourhood in Palm Beach County, Florida, on Sunday, authorities and family members confirmed.
The crash also claimed the life of a 20-year-old co-pilot who had earned her pilot’s licence while still in high school.
Adam Robinson, 44, founder of the Austin-based tech company Retention, and his wife Helen Sharp, 40, were travelling with their two toddlers, the children’s nanny and two close friends from Austin to the Bahamas when the aircraft went down shortly before 1 p.m. local time, according to family members who spoke to TMZ and the New York Post. The family’s identities emerged Monday, shortly after the co-pilot was named.
“It’s quite a blow. We had a daughter, her husband and two grandchildren on the plane,” a relative of one victim told the Palm Beach Post.
Robinson was a Wall Street veteran who spent a decade in finance before launching the AI startup GetEmail and later founding Retention, where he frequently gave interviews on building successful ventures. Sharp ran the communications firm Influential PR and owned an Aspen-based pottery studio, Helen Sharp Ceramics.
The co-pilot was identified by her mother as Nathalia Gadelha Filgueiras, 20, of Boca Raton, Florida. Filgueiras earned her pilot’s licence in 2023 at age 17 while a senior at West Boca Raton Community High School, local news reports at the time noted.
Her family said she had accumulated roughly 1,300 flight hours and worked for Upper Jets in Fort Lauderdale. Her pilot’s licence indicated she was rated to fly the Learjet but not to serve as pilot-in-command.
“She texted her boyfriend, I think, at 12:40pm and the accident was at 12:50pm… She just said, ‘I’ve got turbulence, I’ve got ice,'” her stepfather, Thiago Corteleti, told the New York Post.
The captain of the flight was identified as Jeff Gregory, 55, of Pennsylvania.
Air traffic control recordings captured a rapid deterioration of the flight. The crew initially reported “light, clear ice that is manageable and moderate turbulence” while cruising at 35,000 feet, with an outside air temperature of -47 degrees Celsius. The pilots requested and received clearance to climb to 37,000 feet. Less than 30 seconds later, the situation turned catastrophic.
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“We’re descending 8,000 – mayday, mayday – we’re descending 10,000 feet per minute,” a female pilot radioed, according to recordings captured by LiveATC.net. Moments later: “We are in an overspeed condition descending 20,000 feet per minute.” Then: “We’re going to crash into the ground”.
A man’s voice, presumably the captain, could be heard reciting the Lord’s Prayer as the aircraft fell.
National Transportation Safety Board member Tom Chapman told a news conference Monday that evidence indicated the aircraft was breaking up before impact.
“We do have some indication that the aircraft was breaking up before impact,” Chapman said. “We may find parts of the aircraft some distance away from the actual impact site”.
Chapman said severe weather was a “significant factor” in the investigation, though the NTSB declined to speculate on a probable cause.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis described the scene as “a cataclysmic plane crash. It looked like a missile going down and left a big crater on the side of the road”. One person on the ground suffered a leg injury, while no fatalities were reported among residents of the nearby mobile home community, where about 600 people were evacuated.
The crash was the second-deadliest aviation accident in the United States this year. The FAA and NTSB continued to investigate, with recovery efforts hampered by water filling the impact crater and the possibility that debris was scattered across a wide area.
Sharp’s father, speaking to the Palm Beach Post, offered a brief statement that captured the family’s grief: “It’s quite a blow”.
