Nathalia Gadelha Filgueiras, the 20-year-old co-pilot killed in the Florida Learjet crash, shared a hopeful message on her birthday earlier this year. Now the post has resurfaced, and it’s flooded with condolences.
Nathalia Gadelha Filgueiras had just turned 20 when she shared a few photos from her birthday back in January. In the pictures that she shared on Threads, the young pilot smiles next to a cake with a simple and hopeful caption.
“#20 Thank you God for another year! I can’t wait to see what this one brings,” she wrote, adding a prayer hands emoji and a white heart.
Ten months later, she was killed when the Learjet 60 she was co-piloting crashed in Palm Beach County, Florida.
A post that now feels heartbreaking
The private jet was flying from Austin, Texas, to the Bahamas on Sunday, November 1, when it plunged from around 35,000 feet and crashed into a residential area. All nine people on board died, including Filgueiras and captain Jeff Gregory, 55.
Since then, her Threads post has been shared widely, and the comments have filled with condolences from strangers. Her account also shows photos from her travels, and a post celebrating the day she got her pilot license for the Learjet 60.
She never got to turn 21. “Post like this break me. The wording is always so on brand for unforeseen tragedy,” one comment under the post reads.
“Damn man..this is chilling. May she rest in peace,” another commenter wrote.
The radio recordings reveal the tragic last moments
In the days after the crash, audio from the jet’s final moments was made public. As the plane began spiraling, Filgueiras kept calling out to air traffic control, reporting how fast they were descending. At several points, she could be heard urging Captain Gregory to “look outside.”
Normally, conversations between pilots are only heard once investigators recover the cockpit voice recorder. But in this case, Filgueiras appeared to keep pressing the push-to-talk button, which meant her words went out over the radio.
Neuroscientist Derek Van Schaik looked at the recordings in a YouTube video, and explained why that might have happened. “Under intense stress, our attention narrows, making us less aware of less significant actions like maintaining our grip, holding down a push-to-talk button,” he said.
He also suggested she may have kept transmitting in the hope that someone could help, or at least understand how serious the situation was. Van Schaik also pointed out the enormous weight the crew would have been carrying in those final seconds.
“Keep in mind there are the flight crew responsible for the health and safety of everyone on board, and realizing that there are seven passengers, two of which are very young children,” he said.
He described it as “unbearably heavy,” adding that the pilots had likely met their passengers before takeoff.
The passengers were tech entrepreneur Adam Robinson, 44, his wife Helen Sharp, their children Emma, four, and Charlie, two, their nanny Anita Maria Ramirez Cetina, and family friends Rachael Reed and Charmi Fehr.
The NTSB is still investigating what caused the tragedy.
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