Breaking: Nine killed as Bahamas-bound Learjet nose-dives into Palm Beach County neighborhood

All nine people aboard a Learjet 60 business jet were killed Sunday, November 1, 2026, when the jet nose-dived into a neighborhood in Palm Beach County, Florida, and exploded near a busy road, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said. The Federal Aviation Administration said the jet crashed at about 12:50 p.m. Eastern time. It had departed Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in Austin, Texas, and was bound for North Eleuthera Airport in the Bahamas. The FAA said nine people were on board and called its information preliminary.

Duffy called the crash a "horrific tragedy" in a post on X. "The FAA is sending a team to the scene to support the NTSB's investigation," he said. "Please join me in praying for the families and loved ones of those we lost." The National Transportation Safety Board is leading the investigation and said Sunday it was launching a go-team. Investigators were expected to arrive Sunday and Monday morning, and the NTSB planned a media briefing in West Palm Beach on Monday. No cause has been determined.

Officials had not released the names of the nine people killed or said how many were passengers and how many were crew. Jim Reynolds, a spokesperson for Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, told the Associated Press the jet was a private aircraft and could not say who was on the flight. "This is definitely a tragedy," he said.

The Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office said the jet came down near Military Trail between Cresthaven Boulevard and 10th Avenue North. Sheriff's officials placed the crash in Greenacres, a city of about 45,000 people roughly 7 miles southwest of West Palm Beach. The site is about four miles south of the airport in West Palm Beach, which was renamed President Donald J. Trump International Airport earlier this year. CNN reported that President Trump was in West Palm Beach earlier Sunday and left the airport on Air Force One a little more than an hour before the crash.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis went to the scene. "Obviously, this was a cataclysmic plane crash," he told reporters. "It looked like a missile going down. It left a big crater on the side of the road." He added: "I think people will recognize this as a major tragedy." DeSantis said there were no reports at the time of the news conference of anyone on the ground being killed or injured, said the debris field stretched a long distance, and praised Palm Beach County first responders for their quick response.

Video recorded by people in nearby cars captured the jet plunging from the sky, striking near the roadway and exploding, the AP reported. Flames flickered around chunks of pavement lining the crater, which was only feet from homes and inches from passing vehicles, and thick black smoke covered the site. Video from WPBF showed the road buckled where the jet hit it.

Nearby resident Anthony Blackmon told NBC 6 he was about 500 feet from the crash. "Debris was everywhere. Debris hit my house. Everything was on fire. The road was on fire," he said. "I've always seen it on the news, never thought it would happen so close to somebody like how it happened today." Roger Forcelle said he felt the aircraft pass over his home. "It shook the whole house. It went right over us and crashed probably less than half a mile from where I live," he said. "Everybody came out of their houses because you could feel it shaking." Andrew Mannino told CNN: "I heard and felt the boom. The power immediately went out and is still out." He said he smelled smoke and saw a large black cloud rise into the air. Another person who saw the aftermath said it "looked like a meteor hit the ground." A woman working nearby said the electricity had been out for about two hours.

About 600 people in a nearby mobile home community had to leave their homes Sunday night because the crash scene blocks the entrance to the mobile home park and is being treated as a crime scene while federal investigators work, county officials said. No official has alleged that a crime took place. Palm Beach County Commissioner Joel Flores, who represents District 3 and was the first county official at the scene, said residents were being sent to two county shelters. "So we have about 600 people that we have to make sure that they have shelter tonight," Flores said. He said the Red Cross was standing by, and county officials said Palm Tran buses were ready to carry residents once law enforcement allowed the evacuation.

Palm Beach County closed Military Trail between 10th Avenue North and Purdy Lane/Alameda Drive until further notice, open only to emergency vehicles. The county told drivers to use 10th Avenue North and Purdy Lane/Alameda Drive for east-west travel and Haverhill Road and Kirk Road for north-south travel. A county commissioner warned that parts of the road could stay closed for an extended time because of the crater, and officials said the timeline also depends on the federal investigation.

The jet was flying east at about 35,000 feet when the pilots reported turbulence, icing and precipitation and asked to climb 2,000 feet, according to air traffic control recordings and flight tracking data reported by the AP. Minutes before the crash, the pilot told the Miami Air Route Traffic Control Center: "We have light, clear ice that is manageable and moderate turbulence." The pilot also reported an outside air temperature of minus 47 degrees Celsius and turbulence that was bouncing the jet by as much as 700 feet, according to the recording captured by LiveATC.net.

After the pilots reported precipitation and asked to climb, the situation changed fast. "We're descending 8,000, mayday, mayday, we're descending 10,000 feet per minute," the pilot radioed. "We are in an overspeed condition descending 20,000 feet per minute." The pilot then said: "We're going to crash into the ground." CBS News reported the pilot also said, "We're out of time." The descent rate went from 10,000 feet per minute to 20,000 and then as high as 30,000 feet per minute, pushing the jet beyond its design limits, and the plane banked sharply to the right before hitting the ground at a steep angle, the AP reported. The FAA said the jet fell from 35,250 feet to 8,750 feet in one minute just before the crash. Flight tracking site ADS-B Exchange showed a drop of 27,000 feet in about a minute before the data cut off, CNN reported.

Scattered storms were in the area, and the jet passed through a stronger storm cell a few minutes before it began to descend, CNN reported. The flight was in an area where the FAA had issued a convective SIGMET, a warning of thunderstorms that threaten aircraft. Whether the weather played a part has not been determined. Heavy rain fell across the region Sunday, and the National Weather Service had a flood watch in effect through Monday afternoon. In January 2024 the NTSB issued a safety alert on in-flight icing, warning that ice can "make managing the airplane's flightpath and airspeed more difficult and can prevent the airplane from maintaining level flight."

Mary Schiavo, a CNN aviation analyst and former inspector general of the U.S. Transportation Department, said dashcam video will be important to investigators. "That is not a controlled descent," she said. "So at that point, it's clear whatever happened, they had lost control of the plane." She said the steep dive could have torn parts off the plane and that a flight recorder could have been destroyed in the explosion. It is not known whether the jet carried a cockpit voice recorder. FAA rules require multi-engine jets to carry one only when they are flown for hire; records show the jet was offered for charter flights.

Flight tracking and FAA registry data identify the jet by its registration, N722BD. The FAA registry lists it as a Learjet 60 owned by LR60271 LLC of Wilmington, Delaware, and CNN reported the jet is listed online as available for charter. Officials have not said who operated Sunday's flight.

The crash is the deadliest ever involving a Learjet 60, according to Flight Safety Foundation data cited by CNN. In 2008, four people were killed when a Learjet 60 bound for Los Angeles crashed on takeoff in Columbia, South Carolina. NTSB records show it is the second deadliest crash in the United States this year, after a skydiving plane crash in Butler, Missouri, in June that killed 12. Learjet, the brand that Bill Lear's Lear 23 made famous with wealthy travelers in the 1960s, was most recently built by Canadian manufacturer Bombardier, which stopped making new Learjets in 2021 but still supports the planes in service.