Florida Learjet Crash 11/1/26: Possible cause? (1 Viewer)

[Zipper730]

Given the left-elevator surface was found in three pieces between 1.3 and 3.8 nm from the crash site, and the plane seemed to level off around 8000 feet after the initial dive, prior to the terminal dive, I wonder if the elevator separated at this point?

 

[Admiral Beez]

They (Learget 60) are an unstable hot rod of an aircraft. Very easy to F-up with it in crappy conditions.

How do other 8-passenger private jets compare? Three I'm aware of are the Embraer Praetor 500, Cessna Citation Latitude and Bombardier Challenger 350. If you're a wealthy dude, which do you want to own and/or fly when flying near (or to escape) such weather? If I had to guess, notwithstanding Bombardier's ownership of Learjet, I'll take the made in Canada option.

 

[GTX]

View: https://x.com/HangryDBowman/status/2117591077930545196

 

[GTX]

View: https://x.com/abbyblabby11/status/2118015388818567654

 

[Retattack]

Given the left-elevator surface was found in three pieces between 1.3 and 3.8 nm from the crash site, and the plane seemed to level off around 8000 feet after the initial dive, prior to the terminal dive, I wonder if the elevator separated at this point?

I'm very suspicious of that apparent level off. Just looking at the video of ADSB data, altitude reporting stops at 8750', which suggests the last couple of datapoints are artifacts rather than actual altitude. The elevator being missing at impact (both visual and where the pieces ended up) strongly suggests structural failure in flight, and the obvious place for that to happen was the thunderstorm penetration (or shortly afterward because of ice buildup/airfoil flutter/overspeed). That's just a guess, though, and the engineering investigation will give much more data (eventually).

As far as the mishap itself goes, the big question is: why did they fly through that cell? (Assuming they did; ground radar is famously unreliable for giving a picture of conditions at altitude, but it sure looks bad on the videos.) Was the radar not working? And something nobody seems to be talking about is the descent from 410 to 350 prior to skirting the storms. I'm assuming that's for route restrictions, but in my experience ATC will usually let you delay the descent when dealing with weather, and it makes it much easier to dodge cells.

Juan Browne has a good video covering the anti icing systems and handbook procedures (starting about halfway through). I've never flown a Lear, but there sure seemed to be a lot of cautions about ice effects and some difficult procedures (e.g., having to keep up the engine power to provide bleed air for the system, using spoilers to control speed, but spoilers causing nose tuck above MMO).

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03wk6hVbd7o

 

[pb43]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSngzLP6fR8

Video has some disturbing content, including the crash itself as well as the copilot's communications with ground. This video makes the incredibly dodgy claim that icing may have caused the crash.

When an aircraft nosedives at near the speed of sound into the ground, isn't it always because of lost elevator control, right? This is clearly a maintenance failure.

I believe this is around the seventh fatal crash in the US since 2025. Before that there were zero as far back as I can remember.

It is certain that icing is a major factor. The primary cause is poor decision making, i.e. climbing even closer to coffin corner into icing conditions. The strong up-draughts in that storm drag moisture laden air up to the top of the storm which the aircraft flew into. As soon as they decided to climb and not avoid the storm, they were doomed!