What happened on Military Trail
A Learjet 60 traveling from Austin, Texas, to the Bahamas slammed nose-first into the ground in Palm Beach County, Florida, on Sunday afternoon, erupting into a fireball that left a deep crater in a busy roadway just feet from nearby homes and businesses. All nine people aboard the aircraft were killed, US officials said.
The Learjet crash happened shortly before 1 p.m. on Military Trail, a major thoroughfare between Cresthaven Boulevard and 10th Avenue North, according to the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office. Video captured by a passing vehicle shows the jet plunging straight down before a flash of fire engulfs the wreckage.
“It was a cataclysmic plane crash,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said. “It looked like a missile going down.”
There were no immediate reports of anyone on the ground being injured, but the destruction left about 600 residents of a nearby mobile home park needing shelter because crash debris blocked the only entrance to their community.
“We are in an overspeed condition”
In the moments before the Learjet crash, the pilot’s voice shifted from calm to panicked on air traffic control radio, according to recordings captured by LiveATC.net.
First, the pilot calmly reported ice accumulating on the aircraft, with an outside air temperature of minus 47 degrees Celsius and moderate turbulence that bounced the plane by as much as 700 feet.
Then the situation deteriorated in seconds.
“Mayday, mayday,” the pilot told the Miami Air Route Traffic Control Center. “We’re descending 10,000 feet per minute!”
Moments later, the pilot yelled that the plane was “in an overspeed condition descending 20,000 feet per minute” — adding, “We’re going to crash into the ground!”
Flight tracking data from ADS-B Exchange shows the jet dropped roughly 27,000 feet in the course of a single minute before the data cut off.
A steep, uncontrolled descent
“That is not a controlled descent,” Mary Schiavo, a CNN aviation analyst and former inspector general for the Transportation Department, told CNN on Sunday. “It’s clear, whatever happened, they had lost control of the plane.”
Schiavo said dash cam video of the Learjet crash will be important to investigators, and warned that the violent descent could have broken parts of the plane off in midair and may have destroyed the flight data recorder in the explosion.
Investigators will also examine whether ice played a role. Scattered storms were in the area, and the aircraft had flown through a stronger storm cell just minutes before it began its plunge — though officials say it is not yet clear whether weather contributed.
The risks of in-flight icing are well documented. In January 2024, the National Transportation Safety Board issued a safety alert warning that ice can “make managing the airplane’s flightpath and airspeed more difficult and can prevent the airplane from maintaining level flight,” with private jets considered especially vulnerable.
600 residents displaced by the wreckage
The crash scene sits just miles from the airport in West Palm Beach that was recently renamed for President Donald Trump, and close to his Mar-a-Lago resort.
Video from CNN affiliate WPBF showed the roadway shattered and burning debris scattered across the crater left by the impact.
“I heard and felt the boom,” Andrew Mannino, a nearby resident, told CNN. “The power immediately went out and is still out.” He said he smelled smoke and saw “a large black cloud” in the air.
Because debris blocks the entrance of a mobile home park, about 600 people were sent to two emergency shelters in the county while investigators work the site, Palm Beach County Commissioner Joel Flores said. Flores was the first county official to arrive at the scene.
“There is a lot of debris that was strewn as a result of this crash,” DeSantis said.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy called the Learjet crash a “horrific tragedy.”
FAA and NTSB open a joint investigation
A news conference is expected Monday as authorities from the Federal Aviation Administration and the NTSB begin their formal investigation into the Learjet crash.
Officials have not said what caused the jet to go down, and they have not identified the nine people who died or clarified how many were passengers and crew.
It is also unclear whether the aircraft carried a cockpit voice recorder. FAA rules require jet aircraft with more than one engine to carry a voice recorder when flown for hire — and according to FAA records, this Learjet 60 is registered to a Delaware LLC and listed as available for charter online.
Second-deadliest US crash of 2026
The Palm Beach County crash is the second-deadliest plane crash in the United States this year, according to NTSB records. The deadliest was the June crash of a skydiving plane in Butler, Missouri, which killed 12 people.
It is also the worst crash involving a Learjet 60, according to data from the Flight Safety Foundation. The previous worst was in 2008, when four people died after a Learjet 60 bound for Los Angeles crashed on takeoff from Columbia, South Carolina.
The FAA and NTSB are expected to release more details at Monday’s news conference. This story will be updated as new information becomes available.
Photo: Learjet 60 aircraft (Wikimedia Commons, public domain). Sources: CNN, LiveATC.net, ADS-B Exchange, NTSB, Flight Safety Foundation.