The crucial mistake may have come before the Learjet began its fatal plunge: flying into dangerous weather instead of going around it, according to a veteran pilot interviewed by the New York Post.
Justin Crabbe, a pilot and CEO of charter-booking platform Jettly, told the paper that air traffic controllers had given the crew flexibility to avoid the weather before Sunday's crash in Palm Beach County killed all nine people aboard.
“They certainly should have gone around [the storm],” Crabbe said. “[Air-traffic control] gave them the flexibility to deviate around that weather.”
His assessment comes as investigators examine a debris field roughly half a mile long and four-tenths of a mile wide, with witnesses describing a deep impact crater and little recognizable aircraft wreckage.
That assessment is not an official finding of pilot error. At Monday's briefing, the NTSB had not yet confirmed whether the aircraft flew through an active thunderstorm, according to WFLX's account. The cause remains under investigation.
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