The National Transportation Safety Board said Monday it recovered the cockpit voice recorder from the Learjet 60 that crashed near Greenacres, Florida, on Nov. 1, killing all nine people aboard. The recorder was found at the site of the plane’s initial impact and is being examined at the agency’s Vehicle Recorders Laboratory in Washington, D.C.
Investigators have finished excavating the impact site. They began digging Wednesday after utility crews drained water and removed other hazards, and later recovered part of an engine, the NTSB said.
Earlier in the investigation, crews found the left tail elevator, which helps control the plane’s pitch, in three pieces. One piece was located nearly four miles from the crash site. The NTSB has said that even small wreckage fragments may provide useful evidence.
The jet departed Austin-Bergstrom International Airport at about 10:37 a.m. Sunday, bound for North Eleuthera Airport in the Bahamas. It crashed in Palm Beach County shortly before 1 p.m. All nine people on board died.
The victims were Austin tech entrepreneur Adam Robinson, 45; his wife, Helen Sharp, 40; their children, Emma, 4, and Charlie, 2; the children’s nanny, Anita Maria Cetina; and Rachael Reed and Charmi Fehr.
Heavy rain and thunderstorms were moving across South Florida at the time, and investigators say weather will be a major part of the inquiry. At an altitude of about 41,000 feet, an air traffic controller told the crew that moderate precipitation was roughly five miles away and offered them the option to turn either left or right. The controller warned that the route toward Freeport in the Bahamas “looks pretty bad.”
The crew was later directed toward a waypoint near Naples, Florida, but deviated toward Palm Beach County and reported worsening conditions. They told air traffic control they were encountering icing and turbulence and asked whether there was a “better ride” ahead.
