Investigators have found the left horizontal tail rudder of the Learjet 60 that crashed in Palm Beach County, Florida, on Sunday. Nine people died in the crash. The recovered fragments are scattered between 1.3 and 3.8 miles from the point of impact, which, according to a former investigator of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), may indicate that the aircraft broke apart in the air before hitting the ground.
The rudder controls the aircraft's pitch, that is, the upward and downward movement of the nose. The part was found broken into three pieces. This means it most likely separated before the collision with the ground. It remains an open question whether the loss of the part caused the crash or whether it was torn off by forces that arose during the flight. There is no answer to this yet, and the investigation continues.
The aircraft took off from Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in Texas and was heading to North Eleuthera Island in the Bahamas. The crew reportedly reported icing and moderate turbulence at an altitude of about 35,000 feet, after which the aircraft began to lose altitude rapidly. Before the descent, it briefly leveled off at approximately 8,000 feet. It is this attempt by the pilots to bring the aircraft out of the descent that is now considered one of the key episodes of the flight.
A former NTSB investigator suggested that a structural failure may have occurred during the flight, possibly due to the overload that arose when the pilots attempted to level the aircraft. Weather conditions have become one of the main lines of the investigation, since icing and turbulence at high altitudes can affect controllability and the load on the tail surfaces. Specialists emphasize that without analysis of the wreckage and onboard data, it is impossible to determine what happened first.
The cockpit voice recorder has not yet been found, so its presence at the crash site is not confirmed. Access to the crater formed by the impact is expected on Wednesday, but the area is currently closed off by utility crews carrying out work on the site. The results of the examination of the crater and the search for wreckage will determine whether it is possible to reconstruct the picture of the final minutes of the flight.
Among the dead are technology entrepreneur Adam Robinson, members of his family, a nanny, and two other passengers. The aircraft's captain, Jeff Gregory, and the co-pilot, Natália Gadelha Filgueiras, also died. The tragedy has left the families of the passengers and crew without their loved ones. The National Transportation Safety Board found no evidence linking this flight to Mar-a-Lago, President Donald Trump's residence in Florida, which rules out one of the theories that might have arisen around the crash.