The dashcam clip is hard to watch. Cars roll along Military Trail, a six-lane road in Palm Beach County, Florida, when a business jet drops out of the clouds almost straight down and disappears into a fireball. All nine people aboard the Learjet 60, registered N722BD, were killed on Sunday, November 1, 2026. Nobody on the ground was hurt.
What has kept the story spreading since is not just the video. It’s the data. Within hours, people were pulling up the jet’s track on public flight tracking sites, and UNILAD Tech walked through the final minute as Flightradar24 recorded it. We went further: we read the FAA statement, the radio transcripts reported by the BBC and Aviation International News, and a second-by-second reconstruction built from ADS-B Exchange data. Here’s what the numbers show, and just as important, what they can’t tell anyone yet.
The short version
- The 2004 Learjet 60 was flying from Austin, Texas, to North Eleuthera in the Bahamas and crashed at about 12:50 p.m. local time.
- The FAA says it fell from 35,250 feet to 8,750 feet in one minute. That’s an average of about 26,500 feet per minute.
- The crew reported icing, moderate turbulence and precipitation, asked to climb, then called mayday and reported an “overspeed condition.”
- About 35 seconds after the mayday, the last words heard were “we’re out of time.”
- Tracking data shows the path, not the cause. The NTSB is leading the investigation, and a preliminary report usually lands within about 30 days.
What happened on the flight
According to the BBC, the FAA said the jet had departed Austin and was heading for the Bahamas. Flightradar24’s record lists the actual departure from Austin-Bergstrom at 15:37 UTC, or 10:37 a.m. Eastern. The jet climbed to 41,000 feet and cruised there for close to two hours at a ground speed of roughly 460 knots.
Over South Florida, it stepped down to 35,000 feet. That’s where the trouble started. In radio calls with Miami Center, captured by LiveATC.net and reported by BizJet Journal, the pilot reported an outside air temperature of minus 47°C, light clear ice the crew described as manageable, and moderate turbulence bouncing the jet up and down by as much as 700 feet. Aviation International News reports the pilot asked whether there were “any better rides” ahead and requested a climb to 37,000 feet.
Right after the climb was approved, everything changed. The BBC’s account of the audio has the crew saying the jet was “picking up precipitation” and “we need to climb,” then reporting a descent of 10,000 feet per minute. Then the mayday: “We are in an overspeed condition descending 20,000ft per minute.” Then: “We are going to crash into the ground.” About 35 seconds after the first mayday, the final words were “we’re out of time.”
The jet hit near Military Trail and 10th Avenue North in the Greenacres and Cresthaven area, a few miles south of Palm Beach International Airport and about nine miles from Mar-a-Lago. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis described the video bluntly: “It’s like a missile coming down, and a massive explosion, debris going everywhere.” Officials said about 600 residents of a nearby mobile home community were evacuated, water lines were severed, and the road could stay closed for at least 30 days.
The final minute, in numbers
Public trackers like Flightradar24 and ADS-B Exchange don’t get special access. They listen to the same signal any aircraft with ADS-B Out broadcasts: its GPS position, its pressure altitude, its speed and a vertical rate, sent multiple times per second. Ground receivers, many hosted by hobbyists, pick it up and feed it online. That’s why anyone could replay this flight within minutes.
BizJet Journal published a preliminary timeline based on an ADS-B Exchange export. It stresses that the figures are estimates calculated over roughly four second windows, not flight recorder readings. With that caveat, the sequence looks like this.
| Time (EST) | What the data shows |
|---|---|
| 10:37 a.m. | Departs Austin, climbs to 41,000 ft |
| 12:37 to 12:41 | Steps down to 35,000 ft at about 1,500 ft per minute, then levels off |
| About 12:47 | Right turn near Palm Beach, track swings from about 051° to 100°, ground speed about 460 knots |
| 12:48:06 | Brief climb of about 450 ft above 35,000 ft |
| 12:48:16 | Rapid descent begins. Within 16 seconds it reaches about 20,000 ft per minute |
| 12:48:32 to 12:48:48 | Estimated speed about 540 knots true airspeed, roughly Mach 0.9 |
| 12:48:48 to 12:49:33 | Path steepens past 50° near 18,000 ft, then about 65° to 70°. Vertical rate field hits its −32,640 ft per minute limit |
| About 12:49:33 | Estimated impact, roughly 77 seconds after leaving 35,000 ft, after a tightening right-hand spiral of about 190° |
Two numbers jump out. The first is the speed. The estimated Mach 0.9 is well past the Learjet 60’s maximum operating Mach number of 0.81, listed in a EUROCONTROL performance table. That matches what the crew said on the radio: “overspeed.” The second is the descent rate. The encoded vertical rate topped out at −32,640 feet per minute, which is the ceiling of that data field. In other words, the jet may have been falling even faster than the tracker could report.
For a sense of scale, 26,500 feet per minute is about 300 miles per hour straight down, on top of the forward speed. A typical airliner descends at a couple of thousand feet per minute, and that same Learjet had come down from 41,000 feet at about 1,500 feet per minute only minutes earlier.
What the data can’t tell us
This is where online sleuthing tends to go wrong. ADS-B tells you where a plane went and how fast. It doesn’t tell you why. It doesn’t show what the pilots did with the controls, how the autopilot behaved, what warnings sounded in the cockpit or whether ice was building on the wings or tail. BizJet Journal is careful to note that its trajectory angles describe the flight path, not the nose attitude, and that its airspeed and Mach figures can’t be verified from GPS motion alone.
A few early commentators have already floated theories about pilot experience and weather. Treat those as guesses. Thunderstorms were reported in the area at the time, and the crew talked about icing and turbulence, so weather will clearly be part of the investigation. But nobody outside the NTSB has the full picture. Investigators will want any onboard recordings, the maintenance history, weather radar data, the crew’s training records and the wreckage itself.
| Source | What it shows | What it can’t show |
|---|---|---|
| ADS-B tracking (Flightradar24, ADS-B Exchange) | Position, altitude, speed, vertical rate, track | Control inputs, cockpit alarms, ice buildup |
| ATC radio audio | What the crew reported and when | Conversation inside the cockpit |
| Dashcam and CCTV video | Final seconds and impact angle | Anything that happened at altitude |
| Onboard recorders, wreckage, records | The evidence the NTSB uses to find a cause | Not public until NTSB releases it |
The jet and who owned it
The FAA registry lists N722BD as a Learjet Model 60, serial number 271, registered to LR60271 LLC of Wilmington, Delaware. AIN calls it a Delaware shell company, which is a common setup for private aircraft ownership. An archived sales listing puts the build year at 2004, so the jet was about 22 years old. As of Monday, it hadn’t been publicly confirmed who operated the flight or whether it was a charter. The identities of the nine people aboard had also not been released.
The Learjet 60 is a midsize business jet with a T-tail and two rear-mounted Pratt & Whitney Canada PW305A engines rated at 4,600 pounds of thrust each. It was certified in 1993 and flies with two pilots. The updated 60XR replaced it in 2007, and Bombardier has since ended Learjet production entirely, though many of these jets are still flying.
What happens next
The NTSB leads the investigation, with the FAA supporting. Investigators were on scene Sunday night. The usual pattern is a preliminary report within about 30 days, which lays out facts but no cause, and a final report with a probable cause 12 to 24 months later. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy called the crash a “horrific tragedy” and asked people to pray for the families.
If you want to follow it, the NTSB posts updates on its investigations page and on social media. And if you’ve been watching the flight replays, keep the limits in mind. The data is real and remarkably detailed, but it’s one piece of a much bigger puzzle.
1. Find the tail number (it’s painted on the aircraft, and news reports usually include it)
2. Search it on Flightradar24, FlightAware or ADS-B Exchange
3. Open the flight history and pick the date
4. Use “playback” to replay altitude, speed and track
NOTE: Altitude is usually pressure altitude.
Vertical rates are averaged and can spike or cap out.
Some owners block their tail numbers from public sites.
Flying soon and want to know more about what goes on up there? We recently explained why cracked cockpit windows send planes back to the gate, and how the FAA handled a laptop battery fire on an American Airlines flight.
Sources and further reading
- UNILAD Tech: Flight tracking data reveals terrifying final minute of private jet before crash
- BBC News: Nine killed as small jet crashes on Florida street
- Aviation International News: Florida Learjet Crash Claims Nine Lives
- BizJet Journal: Learjet 60 N722BD Crash Near West Palm Beach Kills Nine
- Flightradar24: N722BD aircraft history
- ABC News: Learjet with 9 aboard crashes in Palm Beach County, Florida
- NTSB: Investigations
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