Make New York Post a Preferred Source Apocalyptic video shows the massive, fiery crater left in a Florida street after a private jet nose-dived out of the sky, killing all nine people on board — as the doomed pilot’s last communication could hold a clue as to what caused the tragedy.
The Learjet, which was traveling from Texas to the Bahamas, plunged some 27,000 feet in a minute, crashing into the ground “like a missile” in Palm Beach County on Sunday.
Dramatic footage shared online shows a gaping hole in the street and debris strewn across the road, as fires raging from the crater billow smoke into the air.
The cause of the disaster is under investigation; however, the pilot warned of ice minutes before issuing a harrowing Mayday call.
The so-far unidentified female aviator reported to Miami air traffic controllers that ice was accumulating on the aircraft, with an outside air temperature of -47 degrees Celsius.
National Transportation Safety Board investigators have previously warned about the dangers of flying in icy conditions.
In 2024, the agency released a safety alert cautioning that ice could “cause flight instruments to cease operating,” which can prevent airplanes from “maintaining level flight.”
The $2 million Learjet 60 plane, which had taken off from Austin, nosedived near a mobile home community in Greenacres, Palm Beach County — less than eight miles from President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
Outgoing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis described the crash as “cataclysmic.”
