Tail section found 3.8 miles from crash site

A section of the tail from the private jet that crashed in Palm Beach County was found 3.8 miles from the impact crater, federal investigators said on Tuesday. The National Transportation Safety Board identified the distance as a key indicator that the aircraft likely suffered an in-flight breakup before it reached the ground.

NTSB member Tom Chapman detailed the findings during a news conference. He noted that the elevator, the control surface that moves the nose of the plane up or down, was discovered in three separate pieces. Chapman explained that without an intact elevator, the pilots would have lost the primary means to correct the aircraft's pitch during a steep descent.

Chapman stated that the function of the elevator is to control the pitch up and down. He added that at the speeds the jet was traveling, the control might not have been effective even if it had remained attached, but its loss is a critical piece of evidence pointing toward other areas of investigation.

The discovery aligns with what Chapman acknowledged on Monday regarding the sequence of events. In the minutes before the crash, the 20-year-old co-pilot, Nathalia Gadelha Filgueiras, reported to air traffic controllers that ice was accumulating on the aircraft. She also described severe turbulence that caused the jet to fluctuate in altitude by more than 700 feet.

Cockpit audio reveals Filgueiras describing a rapid descent as the Learjet 60, which was traveling from Austin, Texas, to the Bahamas, plummeted. The transmissions grew increasingly alarming before the aircraft struck the ground and erupted in a fireball. A man's voice reciting the Lord's Prayer was recorded in the background during the final moments. Friends believe the voice belonged to the other pilot, Jeff Gregory, 55, who was a devout Christian.

All nine people on board died in the crash. The passengers included Austin residents Adam Robinson and Helen Sharp, their two young children Emma, 4, and Charlie, 2, as well as Rachael Reed, Charmi Fehr, and Anita Maria Cetina.

Filgueiras had received her pilot's license before obtaining her driver's license. WPEC, a CBS News affiliate in West Palm Beach, interviewed her three years ago while she was a high school senior in Boca Raton.