Investigators said Monday they have recovered the cockpit voice recorder from a business jet that plummeted from the sky amid severe weather in Florida last week, killing all nine people on board.
The recorder was found at the site where the Bahamas-bound Learjet slammed into the ground and erupted in a fireball Nov. 1, the National Transportation Safety Board said in a statement posted to social media.
If data from the device can be recovered, it could provide crucial details about what the pilots said to each other as they encountered turbulence, ice formed on the wings and they lost control of the aircraft.
It was not immediately known if the recorder had been damaged or if it was working in the first place. The NTSB said the device was being evaluated at a lab in Washington.
From photos the agency posted online, showing the recorder’s orange-painted metal shell, it appeared to be in decent shape, aviation safety expert Jeff Guzzetti told The Associated Press.
“It’s very plausible that any info on the recorder survived,” Guzzetti said. “If they can recover it, and it’s from the accident flight, that will be a huge help to investigators.”
He noted that when the NTSB recovered the cockpit voice recorder from a medical transport plane that crashed in Philadelphia in January 2025, killing seven people, it turned out the device likely had not been functioning for several years.
Witnesses captured dramatic video as the business jet plunged nose-first into the ground, and air traffic control transmissions recorded the disturbing moments as the pilots realized their fate. But the cockpit voice recorder could shed light on other aspects of the crash, including why the Learjet appeared to steer around a large storm cell only to head directly into a rapidly developing smaller one.
Investigators have said pieces of a key part of the tail called the elevator, which controls the plane’s pitch, were found more than a mile away from the main crater, confirming the plane started to break apart before impact.
The co-pilot told air traffic controllers that the plane was being thrown up and down more than 700 feet (213 meters), and she asked them for a better route through the area.
Generally, it takes 12 to 18 months for the NTSB to complete a crash investigation, but complicated cases can take longer. The NTSB’s roughly 400 workers are pursuing more than 1,200 active investigations.
Investigators will review maintenance records and any history of problems with the plane. They will also interview officials at Upper Jets, the company that operated the flight, as well as air traffic controllers and people who work at the airport in Austin, Texas, from where the plane departed.
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