"We're Going to Crash Into the Ground": Nine Killed as a Learjet Nose-Dives Near West Palm Beach

Nine people are dead after a Learjet 60 nose-dived into a neighborhood in Palm Beach County, Florida, and erupted into a fireball near a busy road. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy confirmed on X that everyone aboard was killed. The crash happened at about 12:50 p.m. Eastern on Sunday, 1 November 2026.

"We're Going to Crash Into the Ground": Nine Killed as a Learjet Nose-Dives Near West Palm Beach

West Palm Beach, Florida - The jet was bound for the Bahamas when it came down far short of it, in a residential stretch of county roadway where the impact tore open the asphalt. No one on the ground was reported killed or injured, Governor Ron DeSantis said at the scene. The National Transportation Safety Board is leading the investigation.

The Last Words on the Radio

Air traffic control recordings captured by LiveATC.net preserve the final minutes. The pilot reported ice accumulating on the jet, moderate turbulence jolting it by as much as 700 feet, and an outside air temperature of minus 47 Celsius. "We have light, clear ice that is manageable and moderate turbulence," the pilot told controllers. Then precipitation began to fall, and the pilot asked to climb another 2,000 feet. Moments later the crew declared an emergency as the aircraft began losing altitude at an alarming rate.

"We're descending 8,000 - mayday, mayday - we're descending 10,000 feet per minute," the pilot radioed. Then: "We are in an overspeed condition descending 20,000 feet per minute." And then, on the recording: "We're going to crash into the ground." The Associated Press reports the plane banked sharply to the right before it smashed into the ground.

What the Radar Recorded

The Federal Aviation Administration says the plane fell from 35,250 feet to 8,750 feet in a little over a minute, roughly 350 feet per second, before it hit. The Associated Press, citing air traffic control recordings and flight tracking data, reports the dive accelerated to a peak of about 30,000 feet per minute, speeding the jet beyond its design limits. CNN, citing ADS-B Exchange, reports it lost 27,000 feet in the course of a single minute just before tracking data cut off.

Mary Schiavo, a CNN aviation analyst and former inspector general for the Transportation Department, read those numbers as an ending, not a maneuver. "That is not a controlled descent," she said. "That is a descent where literally you're exceeding the speed of the plane on descent. You're exceeding the descent rate. So at that point, it's clear whatever happened, they had lost control of the plane."

Aviacionline cautions that overspeed figures drawn from ADS-B estimates lose accuracy in extreme maneuvers, and that no official transcript has been released. One timing question is already open. The Miami Herald, quoting an NTSB spokesperson, reports the flight was lost from radar and radio contact around 1:25 p.m., which does not agree with the crash time other officials gave.

Ice, at Cruise Altitude

Whatever else is settled, the crew was working in icing conditions at altitude. A safety alert the NTSB published in January 2024 warns that ice can "make managing the airplane's flightpath and airspeed more difficult and can prevent the airplane from maintaining level flight."

Steve Arroyo, an aviation safety expert, says icing and turbulence could have been factors and may have caused the plane to stall while cruising at 34,000 feet. He says there are many potential factors and that investigators will weigh all of them, including how the pilot responded to what was reported over the radio, and will not rule anything out at this stage. Aviacionline reports there is no confirmation that ice or turbulence caused the loss of control.

The Weather They Were Flying Through

Rain pounded the region on Sunday, and the National Weather Service issued a flood watch for excessive rainfall through Monday afternoon, the Associated Press reports. CNN reports scattered storms were in the area when the jet went down, that it passed through a stronger storm cell a few minutes before it began descending, and that the flight was inside an area where the FAA had warned of thunderstorms and threats to aircraft, known as a convective SIGMET. Whether the storm contributed is not established.

The Scene on Military Trail

The road is buckled where the jet struck, and the impact left a crater in the pavement, CNN reports. The New York Post reports the plane clipped a tree and brought down power lines. The Associated Press describes a jet that appeared to just miss homes before it came down near a busy roadway.

DeSantis did not soften it. "It was a cataclysmic plane crash," the governor said at the scene. "It looked like a missile going down and left a big crater on the side of the road." He added: "I think people will recognize this as a major tragedy." He said the crash created a significant debris field.

Andrew Mannino told CNN what it felt like from the ground. "I heard and felt the boom," he said. The power went out immediately and stayed out. He said he smelled the smoke and "saw a large black cloud immerse in the air." Florida Power & Light crews responded, Local 10 reports.

Six Hundred Neighbors

About 600 people need shelter because the crash scene is blocking the entrance to a mobile home park and residents cannot stay there, said Joel Flores, the Palm Beach County commissioner for District 3 and the first county official at the scene. They are being sent to two county shelters while the site is investigated. Local 10 reports the site sits near the Green Acres Family Community mobile homes.

Whether a structure was hit is disputed. The New York Post reported the jet came down in a mobile home park and appeared to demolish at least one trailer. No official statement has said a home was struck.

County officials said the site is being treated as a crime scene during the investigation, WPTV reports, though no official statement has alleged that a crime took place. Military Trail is closed in both directions between 10th Avenue North and Purdy Lane until further notice, with only emergency vehicles permitted, the Palm Beach County Emergency Operations Center said.

Where It Came Down

The descriptions do not agree. The Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office places the crash near Military Trail, between Cresthaven Boulevard and 10th Avenue North. The Associated Press reports the crash occurred in Greenacres, according to sheriff's officials, a city of 45,000 about seven miles southwest of West Palm Beach. The FAA says "near Cresthaven." The NTSB says Lake Worth Beach.

CNN reports the site is about four miles south of the airport in West Palm Beach, which was renamed for President Donald Trump earlier this year, and about eight miles southwest of Mar-a-Lago. Trump was in West Palm Beach earlier on Sunday but left the airport on Air Force One a little more than an hour before the crash. Flight-tracking data cited by Local 10 puts the jet's last known location east of John I. Leonard High School, at 4701 10th Avenue North.

The Airplane, and the Company That Owns It

The aircraft was a Learjet 60, a twin-engine business jet, 22 years old, ABC News reports. Registry records and flight-tracking data identify it as N722BD. FAA registry records list the registered owner as LR60271 LLC of Wilmington, Delaware, serial number 271.

CNN reports the jet is listed online as available for charter and is registered to a Delaware company according to FAA records, and notes that a registered owner is not necessarily the operator. No statement has named who operated the flight. Jim Reynolds, a spokesperson for Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in Texas, which the FAA says the flight departed from, said it was a private aircraft on a general aviation flight, and that the airport "doesn't have access to information regarding passenger and crew identity, aircraft history, ownership and operator of the aircraft."

Learjets became synonymous with private flying after Bill Lear's Lear 23 caught on with the rich and famous in the 1960s, CNN reports. The brand was most recently built by Canada's Bombardier, which stopped making new Learjets in 2021 and still supports them. The flight was headed for North Eleuthera Airport in the Bahamas, the FAA says.

Nine People, and a Place in the Record

Nobody aboard has been publicly identified. Officials have not named the nine, have not said how many were passengers and how many were crew, and have not announced when names will be released, CNN reports. Duffy called the crash a "horrific tragedy" and asked people to join him in "praying for the families and loved ones of those we lost." He said the FAA is sending a team to support the investigation.

The toll has a rank. CNN, citing NTSB records, reports this is the second-deadliest crash in the United States this year, behind June's skydiving plane crash in Butler, Missouri, which killed 12. CNN also reports, citing the Flight Safety Foundation, that it is the worst crash involving a Learjet 60; in 2008, four people were killed when a Learjet 60 bound for Los Angeles crashed on takeoff from Columbia, South Carolina.

What the Investigators Will Do Next

The NTSB is leading the investigation with FAA support. The board said on X it was launching a go-team, that investigators were arriving at the site on Sunday and Monday morning, and that a media briefing would be held in West Palm Beach on Monday, with time and location to be announced.

Aviacionline reports the board usually publishes a preliminary report within about 30 days, with a final report and a finding of probable cause taking between 12 and 24 months. Investigators will examine the wreckage, any recorders that are recovered, the air traffic control audio, weather data and maintenance history. Schiavo says dash cam video of the crash will be important to them piecing together what happened.

Whether there is a recorder to recover is unresolved. It has not been reported whether the aircraft carried cockpit voice and flight data recorders, or whether they survived the fire. CNN notes FAA regulations require jet aircraft with more than one engine to carry a voice recorder, but only if they are flown for hire, and that records show this airplane was made available for charter. Schiavo says the steep descent could have taken parts off the plane and the recorder could have been destroyed in the explosion.

This article was produced with AI-assisted research and editorial support. Sources: the Associated Press, CNN, ABC News, the Miami Herald, Local 10, AeroCorner, Aviacionline, WPTV and the New York Post. Photographs: Giorgio Viera/Reuters; @prolific369 via the New York Post. Cover: Global 1 News editorial image.

By Jessica Ali, Staff Writer