'We're gonna crash! ... 'We're out of time' among last words from pilot
John Bisognano"We're gonna crash! ... we're out of time!"
That's a quote being attributed to the female pilot of the Learjet 60 moments before it crashed near Greenacres on Sunday, Nov. 1 afternoon, killing all nine people on board. Accounts said it was the pilot communicating with Air Traffic Controllers.
As of Sunday afternoon, there were no reports of people on the ground who died or were injured.
Other reports quoted the pilot as saying “We are descending 22,000 ft, and we are banking 60 degrees. We’re out of time."
According to the audio, the Learjet's flight crew told air traffic controllers they had experienced turbulence and were dealing with ice.
As Kim Miller of USA Today-Florida reported, a stalled frontal boundary parked over the area Sunday, pushing freezing cloud tops to tower tens of thousands of feet high — a situation that can cause icing trouble with equipment.
After the crew said they were going to climb, not unusual for pilots as they try to move outside of severe weather, a mayday call came in.
The Learjet began descending 10,000 feet per minute. Then 20,000 feet per minute. According to the New York Post, flight data would show them eventually descending 32,000 feet per minute, or 360 mph.
“It was a cataclysmic plane crash. It looked like a missile going down and left a big crater on the side of the road," Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said at the scene.