The father of the 20-year-old co-pilot who died along with eight others when their Learjet crashed in Florida said Friday he has listened to his daughter’s heartbreaking final radio transmissions “many times” since the crash.
The family’s nanny, Ana María Ramírez Cetina, was also killed.
The crash victims included technology entrepreneur Adam Robinson; his wife, Helen Sharp; and their two young children, relatives said.
“I have to find a way to go on living. The family wants to push back against online criticism over whether she had enough experience to be in the cockpit of a high-performance business jet. She had more than 1,300 hours of experience and completed extensive training to earn her commercial pilot’s license and get certified for a Learjet. The plane’s captain, 55-year-old Jeff Gregory, is believed to have been at the controls in the aircraft’s final minutes.
“For the family — it’s like having the heart torn from my chest,” her father said in Spanish. “She was at the top of her class in everything that she did, and she was perfectly qualified to be the co-pilot on this flight, despite her tender years,” attorney Stuart Grossman said, noting there were no immediate plans to file a lawsuit over the crash.
It’s far too early in the National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation to know what caused the crash. As it fell, the Learjet accelerated beyond its design limits and pieces of the plane’s tail were found miles away from the crash site.
