Names of victims of horrific Florida jet crash revealed as new details emerge

A statement was released by the families

Among those killed when the business jet crashed in a Florida neighbourhood were a family with two young children and a 20-year-old co-pilot.

The Learjet aircraft was travelling to Bahamas from Texas, when it erupted into a massive fireball in Greenacres, about 11km southwest of West Palm Beach.

The crash occurred at about 12.50pm local time (5.50pm UK) on Sunday, 1 November.

On Monday, pilot's final words emerged just moments before the plane hit the ground.

Names of the Learjet crash victims and families' statements

A 20-year-old co-pilot, Nathalia Gadelha Filgueiras, was among the vicitims, her mother told the New York Post and The New York Times.

ABC News reported that Adam Robinson, a technology entrepreneur, his wife Helen Sharp and their two children were also killed in the horrific crash, as well as Anita Maria Cetina, who helped care for their children.

Charmi Fehr and Rachael Reed also died, and the identity of the other pilot is not yet known.

The Robinson, Fehr, Reed and Cetina families released a joint statement on social media, where they said “their loss will be felt deeply by all those who loved them and who they loved in return.”

What the latest investigations found

On Monday, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said that investigators had found evidence that before hitting the ground, the plane had started to break up.

Weather conditions would be a key focus of the investigation, the NTSB added, while investigators were still trying to determine what conditions were like at 35,000ft.

That was the altitude at which the pilots started reporting turbulence, icing and precipitation.

According to the NTSB, the plane was originally equipped with a cockpit voice recorder that investigators hope to recover.

Prior to the incident, the Federal Aviation Administration had published a warning about thunderstorms.

AccuWeather also said that the tops of some of the storm clouds reached up to 45,000ft.