A father who taught his daughter to love flying is mourning after her Learjet crashed in Florida

By Alaa Elassar, Carolina Peguero, CNN

(CNN) — Nathalia Gadelha Filgueiras was 12 when she started going up in planes while her father was at the controls, watching the ground fall away beneath them. By the time she was 17, she had her own pilot’s license, having fallen in love with flying just as her father had. ‌

Allan Filgueiras fought back tears Friday as he remembered the daughter who followed him into the sky.

“She’s my soulmate,” Filgueiras told CNN. “Having her to talk about aviation. Now, I feel like my life is missing.”

Nathalia Filgueiras, 20, was the copilot of the Learjet 60 that plunged 35,000 feet nose-first into a South Florida roadway Sunday. All nine people on board were killed. The cause of the crash isn’t yet known, and the weather and the aircraft will be among many factors examined during the National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation.

Nathalia’s voice is heard on a chilling audio recording of the flight’s final minutes – first calmly telling an air traffic controller they were experiencing turbulence and manageable icing; then declaring an emergency as the plane dove hundreds of feet per second; and eventually ending with her last transmission: “We’re out of time.”

On Friday, Allan Filgueiras held a news conference to talk about the daughter he treasured. He was flanked by his lawyer, who said Allan wanted to “preserve not just her memory but her reputation.”

“We’re not making allegations against anybody at this time,” attorney Stuart Grossman said. “We’re going to do the right thing. We’re going to listen to what the government uncovers. Then we’ll have our experts look at it and say they agree or not. But I think everyone should stay out of the government’s way.”

For the father, what he wants remembered about his daughter is how enamored she was with flight, and how good she was at it.

When she was just starting out, she said: “Dad, there’s nothing else that I want to do in my life other than flying,” he recalled to CNN after the news conference.

“I told her that there’s nothing in this planet that you want that bad that you can’t achieve,” Allan Filgueiras said. “So you are going to be the pilot you wish to be.”

The young pilot graduated from American Flyers, one of the most prestigious aviation schools in the United States, her family told CNN Brasil.

By the time of the crash, Nathalia had commercial pilot and flight instructor licenses and was rated to fly larger, more complicated planes and serve as a first officer in the Learjet 60, according to Federal Aviation Administration records.

It was her dream come true, her father said.

“She said, ‘Dad, can you believe (it)? … I would pay for this, but they’re actually paying me,’” he said at the news conference. “It was her happiest moment, to fly.”

Remembered for her love of being in the air

The Learjet 60 was heading from Austin, Texas, to the Bahamas. Killed were seven passengers – tech entrepreneur Adam Robinson and Helen Sharp; their two children, Emma and Charlie; caregiver Anita Maria Cetina; and another couple, Rachael Reed and Charmi Fehr – and Nathalia Filgueiras and pilot Jeff Gregory.

Footage from a vehicle’s dashboard camera shows the crash, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said the plane came down so fast, it “looked like a missile going down.” Investigators are still searching the crater in the pavement for clues to how the flight ended in catastrophe. On Thursday, they recovered part of the plane’s engine.

Four days before the crash, Nathalia and her father spent the afternoon together at a boat show and had lunch.

“I spent the day with her, and I was saying (to her), ‘This is the best day of my life to spend this afternoon with you,’” he told CNN.

Allan Filgueiras describes himself as someone who has always been happy. But after they said goodbye that day, he felt a sudden pang of sadness he couldn’t explain.

“I don’t know why. For a second, because I wouldn’t let (it) last more than that, I felt so sad, and it’s a feeling that I never had before in my life,” he said. “I can’t believe that was the last day that I spent with her.”

Flying was at the heart of their relationship. “Put her and I together,” he said, and aviation was “the only thing that we want to talk about.”

Allan Filgueiras started learning to fly when Nathalia was 12, and he would take her on flights with an instructor aboard, he said. He would receive his private pilot certificate from the Federal Aviation Administration in 2021, FAA records show.

He’s rated to fly single-engine planes and holds an instrument rating, which lets him fly through clouds and low visibility using only the plane’s instruments.

His daughter went further.

“She became an extraordinary pilot,” he told CNN. Eventually, the roles reversed. Nathalia ran him through drills, simulating instrument panel failures so he could learn to conduct night flights without them.

“She would put the plane in upset situations for me to recover. The other day, she said, ‘You know what? I think you can do better. Let’s do it again,’” he said. “So I became a student, and she became an instructor to keep me sharp and safe.”

He plans to keep flying.

“I will continue her legacy,” he said. “Each time that I’m gonna be flying, I’m gonna be connecting with her. I want to make her proud.”

Nathalia Filgueiras’ family is Brazilian but lives in Florida, where she was born, Camila Gadelha Corteleti, her mother, told CNN Brasil this week.

“She was a very good girl – responsible, hardworking,” Corteleti said.

She received her pilot’s license before she even got her driver’s license, her stepfather Thiago Corteleti told CNN Brasil.

“I like being different than everyone, so to me, I think it’s, like, cool,” Nathalia Filgueiras told CNN affiliate WPEC in 2023, adding that her goal was to become a commercial airplane pilot or fly private jets. “Some people think that it’s, like, weird because I can fly planes, but I can’t drive a car … but a lot of people think it’s funny.”

The school district paid for Filgueiras to get her private pilot’s license, according to WPEC.

The investigation

On Sunday, the two pilots in the Learjet had been working around bad weather for much of the Bahamas-bound flight from Texas. While the plane was near Florida’s Gulf Coast, less than 20 minutes before the crash, an air traffic controller warned that the turn they’d requested toward the Bahamas could take them into a thunderstorm.

“The turn to Freeport looks pretty bad,” the controller said in audio captured by LiveATC.net. “There is moderate to extreme precipitation 11 o’clock, and 25 miles. 100 miles in diameter.”

The jet flew south around the storm before it was cleared to turn east. The controller said the pilots could change course as needed to avoid the worst of it.

When Nathalia Filgueiras later checked in with a controller covering the West Palm Beach area, she reported that turbulence was bouncing the plane up to 700 feet and that light ice was building on the aircraft.

“If you have any better rides, let us know,” she said.

“The rides do improve in my airspace,” the controller replied. “You can expect better rides ahead.”

Moments later, Filgueiras reported precipitation and asked to climb to 37,000 feet, and the controller approved. Less than 30 seconds later, something went terribly wrong and the plane plummeted toward the ground.

“We’re descending 8,000 – mayday, mayday – we’re descending 10,000 feet per minute,” she said. It wasn’t long before she cried out, in her final transmission, “We’re out of time.”

The plane passed through a strong storm cell just before the sudden descent. Though it is unclear if the weather contributed to the crash, it is “certainly a key focus of the investigation,” NTSB member Tom Chapman said this week.

Another big clue landed miles from the crash site. Most of the jet’s left elevator, the part of the tail that controls whether the nose tilts up or down, was found in three pieces between 1.3 and 3.8 miles from the crater, Chapman said. That distance shows the part broke away before impact. But investigators don’t yet know whether its loss caused the dive or whether the forces of the dive tore it off.

Investigators are also searching the crater for the rest of the wreckage, and for a cockpit voice recorder. Maintenance records show the jet had one installed, but it’s unclear whether it was still on board.

“Our mission is to understand not just what happened, but why it happened, and to recommend changes to prevent it from happening again,” Chapman said.

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