Nathalia Gadelha Filgueiras was 20 years old and still talking to air traffic control as her plane fell from the sky. Her father, Allan Filgueiras, says that is how he wants her remembered.
Nathalia was the copilot of the Learjet 60 that crashed in Greenacres in Palm Beach County on Sunday, November 1, killing all nine people on board. The private jet had left Austin, Texas, headed for the Bahamas. Minutes before the crash, Nathalia told controllers the plane was picking up ice and being thrown around by severe turbulence, then declared “mayday” as it dropped toward the ground.
At an emotional news conference Friday, her father said he has listened to those final transmissions “many times,” searching for answers about what happened. What he found was pride. “She showed me what it is to be a hero,” he said, “because once you see that coming, a lot of the big boys, military or whatever, they can’t handle. And she was the one over there to the last minute fighting.”
Allan is a pilot himself, and he broke down as he talked about his daughter. “She was gifted and my soulmate,” he said. “I wanted to be by her side inside the plane to help.” Speaking in Spanish, he described what the family is going through: “It’s like having the heart torn from my chest.”
The press conference was also about protecting her name. Since the crash, people online have questioned whether someone her age had enough experience to be in the cockpit of a high performance business jet. The family’s attorney, Stuart Grossman, said they came forward to “preserve not just her memory, but her reputation.”
“She was at the top of her class in everything that she did, and she was perfectly qualified to be the copilot on this flight, despite her tender years,” Grossman said. He added that the family has no immediate plans to file a lawsuit.
Nathalia had more than 1,300 hours of flight experience. She held commercial pilot and flight instructor licenses and was certified to serve as first officer on the Learjet 60, according to Federal Aviation Administration records.
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Flying ran in the family. Nathalia was 12 when she started riding along on flights while her father was learning to fly, and she had her own pilot’s license by 17. Her family is Brazilian, and she was born in Florida. Four days before the crash, she and her dad spent the afternoon together at a boat show and had lunch.
The pilot, Jeff Gregory, also died in the crash, along with Austin couple Adam Robinson and Helen Sharp, their children Emma, 4, and Charlie, 2, their nanny, Ana María Ramírez Cetina, and family friends Rachael Reed and Charmi Fehr.
The National Transportation Safety Board is still investigating. Investigators have documented icing, turbulence and signs the plane was breaking apart before it hit the ground, but they have not named a cause.
