What the NTSB is examining as it investigates why a Learjet plunged into the ground

By Alaa Elassar, CNN

(CNN) — Nearly 4 miles separated a piece of a Learjet’s tail from the burning crater gouged into the pavement where the aircraft came down.

The plane, carrying nine people including a couple with children, plunged 35,000 feet, nose-first, into a South Florida roadway on Sunday afternoon. The aircraft was reduced to fire, ash and a field of debris, and all aboard were killed. Now investigators are trying to figure out how a flight ended in catastrophe.

National Transportation Safety Board investigators are sifting through neighborhoods and a waterlogged crater in Palm Beach County for debris and analyzing the plane’s final radio calls to answer questions at the center of their work: Why did the plane plummet, and when and why did the plane start to come apart?

On Tuesday, NTSB member Tom Chapman said investigators had recovered a critical component of the plane: Part of the tail – the aircraft’s left elevator – was found in three pieces far from the crater. But investigators don’t yet know if the broken pieces caused the tragic dive or came off because the plane was plunging.

Aviation experts say the answers will most likely come from a variety of places: the dispersed wreckage; the cockpit voice recorder, if it was on board and its data survived; the weather the jet flew into; the decisions made in the cockpit and by air traffic control; the procedures of the pilots’ employer; and the plane’s maintenance history.

Finding those answers will take time. The NTSB is expected to release a preliminary report in about a month, a spokesperson told CNN, but determining a probable cause will take between one and two years.

Here are some of the things investigators will examine:

Ice, turbulence and storms

The first warnings came over the radio minutes before the crash. Flying at about 35,000 feet as scattered storms moved across South Florida, one of the pilots calmly told air traffic control that ice was forming on the plane but was manageable, and turbulence was throwing the craft up and down by about 700 feet. Moments later, she declared an emergency.

Weather is “certainly a key focus of the investigation,” Chapman said.

The pilots had been working around bad weather for much of the Bahamas-bound flight from Texas. While the plane was near Florida’s Gulf Coast, less than 20 minutes before the crash, an air traffic controller warned that the turn they’d requested toward the Bahamas could take them into a thunderstorm.

“The turn to Freeport looks pretty bad,” the controller said in audio captured by LiveATC.net. “There is moderate to extreme precipitation 11 o’clock, and 25 miles. 100 miles in diameter.”

The jet flew south around the storm before it was cleared to turn east. The controller said the pilots could change course as needed to avoid the worst of it.

When the co-pilot later checked in with a controller covering the West Palm Beach area, she reported that turbulence was bouncing the plane up to 700 feet and that light ice was building on the aircraft.

“If you have any better rides, let us know,” she said.

“The rides do improve in my airspace,” the controller replied. “You can expect better rides ahead.”

Moments later, the crew reported precipitation and asked to climb to 37,000 feet, and the controller approved. Less than 30 seconds later, something went terribly wrong and the plane plummeted toward the ground.

“We’re descending 8,000 – mayday, mayday – we’re descending 10,000 feet per minute,” the co-pilot said. It wasn’t long before she cried out, in her final transmission, “We’re out of time.”

The plane passed through a strong storm cell just before the sudden descent. Though it is unclear if the weather contributed to the crash, federal investigators have said it will be part of their investigation.

Ice – one of the most dangerous hazards in aviation – also will be considered. It adds weight and drag and reduces a plane’s lift and thrust, which can slow it or push it downward.

The higher the altitude, the colder the air gets, and the co-pilot reported an outside temperature of minus 47 degrees Celsius (minus 53 degrees Fahrenheit), cold enough that liquid water should already be frozen. But powerful updrafts inside thunderstorms can carry supercooled water droplets to high altitudes – droplets that remain liquid until they hit a plane and freeze on contact.

Former NTSB managing director and CNN aviation analyst Peter Goelz expects the weather to be central to the investigation.

“It could (have been because of the) ice. It could be severe updraft or downdraft,” Goelz told CNN, adding the weather may have been more serious than the pilots knew.

“Did their radar show them this storm in all its fury? I don’t know if it did,” Goelz said. A cockpit voice recorder, if one is recovered, could reveal “what they thought they were flying into and what they were really flying into.”

Mary Schiavo, a CNN transportation analyst and former inspector general of the US Department of Transportation, said that in weather-related crashes she has worked on, pilots often lacked accurate information. Some checked the forecast too long before takeoff and never rechecked it. Others got bad information or didn’t have, or didn’t use, onboard radar and in-flight weather services.

It’s too soon to speculate, Schiavo said, about the reasons for and timing of the Learjet’s route as they related to the weather, and whether they mattered.

What the debris tells investigators

One of the big clues investigators will be looking at fell miles from the crash site.

Most of the jet’s left elevator, the part of the tail that helps pilots control whether the nose tilts up or down, was found in three pieces between 1.3 and 3.8 miles from the crash site, Chapman said Tuesday. That distance shows it broke away before the plane hit the ground, but investigators don’t yet know whether the breakaway caused the dive, or whether heavy forces from the dive caused the breakaway, Chapman said.

The debris could point to the latter, Goelz said.

“It’s unlikely that the elevator caused the upset,” Goelz told CNN. “If it had caused the upset, it would have detached at a higher altitude and they would have found it, if they found it at all, miles (farther) away.”

“My guess is … the elevator is a result of the disrupted flight, not the cause of it,” he said.

Investigators will study the broken edges of the elevator for “witness marks,” the traces metal leaves when it separates, Goelz said. Those marks can show whether the elevator was violently torn away or had an earlier weakness, such as metal fatigue.

Schiavo reads the debris the same way Goelz does. In her view, the parts most likely came off “in this horrific dive,” not before it. That still would leave the question of what started the dive. Schiavo expects investigators to turn their focus “to the weather, to the storm cell, to the icing.”​‌

A severe storm could have threatened the jet in several ways, Schiavo said. It could have caused both engines to flame out, or coated the wings or tail in ice. The recovered tail pieces could become “the pivotal point in the investigation,” she said, because they may help investigators work out which of those happened.​‌

Much of the remaining evidence may be in the crater. The jet hit the ground almost straight down at high speed, and days of rain flooded murky water into the hole it left, slowing the recovery.

“We expect to find critical airplane components within the crater,” Chapman said Tuesday, though those pieces “are going to be very likely in smaller pieces.”

For now, investigators are documenting the scene, examining the wreckage and collecting perishable evidence, NTSB spokesperson Jennifer Gabris told CNN. The wreckage will then be moved to a secure facility for evaluation.

Other critical evidence

More pieces could still turn up, and what would be one of the jet’s most important witnesses, a cockpit voice recorder, may be somewhere in that wreckage.

“There have been a number of investigations I can recall where pieces did show up, you know, a week or 10 days after the accident,” Goelz said. “So every piece is critical. But at 35,000 feet … you’re talking about a very wide area to search.”

Determining whether the plane was equipped with a cockpit voice recorder will be essential. Aircraft maintenance records show one was installed on the plane, but it is unclear whether it was still on board, Chapman said.

Chapman said investigators could work without it: “Our folks are very, very good. We’re still able to do some incredible detective work.”

If there was a recorder and it survived the impact, it will be critical, Goelz said. Along with the crew’s voices, it could show how the pilots judged the weather as they flew into it.

“It will have the discussion of the flight crew looking at the weather and saying something about it,” Goelz said. “But more importantly, it will have hopefully sounds and chimes from inside the cockpit. For instance, if the autopilot goes off uncommanded, there’s an alert that says you just lost your autopilot, and you’ll hear it on the voice recorder.”

Even a recovered recorder doesn’t guarantee answers. After a Learjet 55 crashed in Philadelphia in January 2025, its recorder sat for days in water and fuel at the bottom of an impact crater. NTSB specialists cut through the case and cleaned and dried the tape before they could play it. When they did, they found no recording of that flight was made; the tape’s audio was from a previous landing, and the recorder had jammed, according to an NTSB report released in March.

There’s also a chance a recorder, if the plane had one, will never be recovered, Schiavo said.

“It’s hard for people to fathom that an entire aircraft disappeared into a hole. … With such an explosion, in the cases I’ve worked over decades, the times when the cockpit voice recorder has not been recoverable has been situations where there have been huge fireballs in the explosion.”

A plea to the public

NTSB investigations focus on three areas: the pilot, the aircraft and what the agency calls the “operating environment,” Gabris told CNN. Investigators will collect flight tracking data, air traffic control recordings, plane maintenance records, and forecast and weather around the time of the crash. They’ll also review the pilots’ licenses, recent flight experience and activities in the 72 hours before the flight.

But some of the most valuable evidence may come from people on the ground.

Investigators are reviewing dashboard camera footage and other video recorded by drivers and bystanders. That footage and eyewitness accounts will “help us better understand the condition of the aircraft and the circumstances of the crash,” Chapman said.

Residents can also help by reporting wreckage.

“If members of the community come across items that they believe may be part of the aircraft or the aircraft wreckage, please don’t touch them or move them. Please contact NTSB or local authorities, and we will take appropriate action,” Chapman said.

Where a piece lands matters as much as the piece itself, Schiavo said. People who live or work nearby can “serve a tremendous public service” by reporting debris, she said.

“They shouldn’t move them. They shouldn’t touch them, but they should call them in because where they find the pieces will give the NTSB clues as to how this plane came apart.”

For hundreds of others, the crash has upended daily life. The wreckage blocked the only entrance to a nearby mobile home park, forcing residents out of their homes, according to Joel Flores, a Palm Beach County commissioner. Some had stepped outside to see what happened and couldn’t get back in once police set up a perimeter. Many still can’t reach their belongings or the vehicles they need to get to work. Up to two weeks could pass before they can return, Flores said Monday.

It will likely take more than a year for the NTSB to determine what caused the crash.

“Our mission is to understand not just what happened, but why it happened, and to recommend changes to prevent it from happening again,” Chapman said.

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