The authorities are continuing to investigate how a plane carrying nine people on Sunday afternoon climbed to an altitude of 37,000 feet, then suddenly fell from the sky at a rate of 20,000 feet per minute into a roadway outside Palm Beach, Florida.
All those on board were killed, the authorities said.
The Learjet 60 flight was traveling from Austin, Texas, to North Eleuthera Airport in the Bahamas.
The authorities have not released the identities of those on the plane.
“This was a cataclysmic plane crash,” Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida said at a news conference on Sunday. “It looked like a missile going down.”
Here’s what we know.
What happened
Radio traffic between the pilot and air traffic control in Miami indicated that the plane was encountering “light, clear ice that is manageable and moderate turbulence,” on Sunday afternoon.
The pilot asked if she could climb to 37,000 feet, presumably to fly above the turbulent air. But moments later, she declared mayday, a life-threatening emergency, to traffic controllers.
The plane was “descending 20,000 feet per minute,” she screamed.
“We’re going to crash into the ground,” she added, before shrieking, “We’re going to die!”
The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board said they would be investigating the accident.
Local officials said on Sunday that they were evacuating about 600 residents in the small community of trailer homes near the impact zone, where smoldering chunks of metal ignited small fires throughout the community.
Officials said that no one on the ground was injured.
Expert analysis
A cause for the crash was not immediately clear.
Aviation safety experts said that they were struck by the plane’s rapid loss of altitude and the mention of ice by the pilot.
The pilot was indicating that the “plane was uncontrollable,” Steven Arroyo, a retired United Airways airline captain said after listening to an audio recording of the conversation between air traffic controllers and the plane’s pilot.
Mary Schiavo, an aviation lawyer and former inspector general for the Department of Transportation, said that if too much ice builds up on the wings of a plane, it can destroy airflow, which could be consistent with how the plane turned and fell.
“That is a plane not descending, but a plane falling,” said Schiavo, who reviewed videos posted on social media and flight data. She added, “Icing can be so severe it can overcome and stall the plane.”
What witnesses saw
Esteban Ruiz, a resident of the trailer home community near where the crash occurred, said he was relaxing when he heard a loud noise and what he thought was rain pelting his roof. It was actually pieces of metal debris raining down from the plane’s impact. He said he rushed outside and saw chaos.
“I thought maybe it was lightning,” he said in Spanish of the crater in the ground from where the plane crashed.
Stephanie Platts, another resident of the community near the crash site, said that she was sitting on her patio with her family when she heard a loud noise that sounded like a car crash. Platts said she froze as her mobile home caught on fire, caused by flying debris from the plane hitting the ground.
Neighbors tried to help her put out the flames. She remembered seeing human remains scattered around her. And in the aftermath, she lost her dog named Moose, who ran away when the plane crashed. She hopes he took shelter somewhere in the midst of the chaos.
“Everything was engulfed in flames,” she said, “and then after the flames, was like rain of metal.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.