A business jet carrying nine people nose-dived into a South Florida neighborhood Sunday and erupted into a giant fireball that appeared to just miss homes near a busy roadway. Everyone on board was killed, the nation’s transportation secretary said.
Video recorded by people inside their cars captured the terrifying moment the Bahamas-bound aircraft plunged from the sky before striking near the Palm Beach County roadway and exploding. Flames flickered around chunks of pavement lining a crater as people milled about, expressing shock that it landed only feet from homes and inches from passing vehicles. Thick black smoke engulfed the crash site.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy posted on X that the Learjet 60 crashed in Palm Beach County at 12:50 p.m. and called it a “horrific tragedy.” The Federal Aviation Administration is sending a team to support the National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation, he said.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said there were no immediate reports of anyone on the ground injured or killed.
“It was a cataclysmic plane crash,” DeSantis told reporters at the scene. “It looked like a missile going down and left a big crater on the side of the road.”
Rain pounded the region on Sunday. A flood watch due to excessive rainfall was in effect through Monday afternoon, the National Weather Service said.
The aircraft had departed Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in Texas and was headed to the Bahamas, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. Authorities did not immediately say what caused the jet to go down or who was on it.
The plane was heading east at 35,000 feet (about 11 kilometers) when pilots reported turbulence, icing and precipitation and requested to climb another 2,000 feet (about 610 meters).
