Investigators have recovered three pieces of a Learjet 60's left elevator between 1.3 and 3.8 miles from the road where the jet crashed in Palm Beach County, Florida, on November 1, 2026, killing both pilots and all seven passengers. The pieces account for most of the left elevator, and National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) member Tom Chapman said at a November 3 briefing that their discovery confirms part of the tail separated in flight.
Chapman said the crew would have been unable to pull the Learjet out of its dive without the elevator intact. "At those speeds I don't know that it would've been effective even if it had still been attached to the aircraft," he said. Still frames from dashcam footage taken moments before impact appear to show the Learjet missing its entire horizontal stabilizer; whether the whole stabilizer separated remains a focus of the investigation. The NTSB has not determined when the elevator separated, or whether losing it contributed to the loss of control.
Aurora Aviation operated the charter flight from Austin-Bergstrom International Airport (AUS) in Texas to North Eleuthera in the Bahamas. At about 12:47 local time, the Learjet was flying at 35,000 feet when the crew reported light clear icing and moderate turbulence, describing the ice as manageable but telling air traffic control the jet was deviating from its assigned altitude by about 700 feet. The crew then reported precipitation and asked to climb to 37,000 feet; less than 30 seconds after a controller approved the climb, the crew radioed that the aircraft was descending and declared an emergency. At about 12:48, the crew reported an overspeed, and the jet struck South Military Trail near Greenacres about three minutes later.
The nine people killed were Austin tech entrepreneur Adam Robinson, 45, and his wife, Helen Sharp, 40, their two young children, the children's nanny, Ana María Ramírez Cetina, 24, and family friends Rowan Charmi Fehr Toews and Rachael Reed, both 38. The pilots were Captain Jeffrey Gregory, 55, and First Officer Nathalia Gadelha Filgueiras, 20. Crews had to pump water from the impact crater before investigators could reach the main wreckage, after a water main broke and heavy rain slowed the work. Maintenance records showed a cockpit voice recorder had been installed, although investigators were still working to establish whether it was aboard for the flight. The NTSB has received dashcam footage and multiple eyewitness accounts, and the investigation is still in its early stages, with no probable cause identified.