Family of four, two close friends and nanny also died in crash as pilot identified as 55-year-old Jeff Gregory

Nathalia Filgueiras, 20, was co-pilot of the private Learjet 60 en route from Austin-Bergstrom international airport in Texas to North Eleuthera airport in the Bahamas on Sunday when it suddenly plummeted out of the sky, killing all onboard, her mother told the New York Times.

Later on Monday, the family of the passengers who died posted a statement on Facebook identifying the victims and paying tribute to them.

It named them as Adam Robinson, 45, a Texas-based technology entrepreneur; his wife Helen Sharp, 40; and their children, Emma, four, and Charlie, two. The statement said close family friends Rachael Reed and Charmi Fehr were also killed, along with Anita Maria Cetina, the children’s nanny.

The pilot in charge of the Learjet was identified by TMZ and other media outlets on Monday as Jeff Gregory, 55, an experienced aviator from Pennsylvania.

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[–] 49 points 6 days ago* (6 children)

If I die in a planecrash, or heck, by any outlandish means at all, I really hope the internet doesn't latch onto my death as if I was a part of some conspiracy. Especially when everyone knowledgeable says this is exactly how that event would go. Shameful.

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  • [–] 8 points 6 days ago (4 children)

    I haven't read about any conspiracy. Where are you getting your news?

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  • [–] 8 points 6 days ago (3 children)

    Basically just accusing her of being a DEI hire.

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  • [–] 4 points 6 days ago (2 children)

    Don't use social media for news.

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  • [+] 7 points 6 days ago (2 children)
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  • [–] 68 points 1 week ago (1 child)

    thoughts go out the families of the pilots and the nanny.

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  • [–] 19 points 1 week ago
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  • [–] 17 points 6 days ago* (1 child)

    I feel bad for the pilots and kids and the nanny.

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  • [–] 10 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 child)

    Brace girl. Kept working the problem till the end.

    Edit: Brave

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  • [–] 142 points 1 week ago (62 children)

    Private/business jets should be outlawed, on top of the ecological cost most crashes are small planes like this. And people will say “oh but they’re safer than cars”, but nobody needs a fucking jet to get places. The consequences of it failing are just too high.

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  • [–] 22 points 6 days ago* (1 child)

    They're not safer than cars if i remember right. Small planes are a lot more dangerous statistically per hour or mile travelled. Going per hour general aviation is 24 times more lethal https://avweb.com/insider/why-we-dont-care-about-fatal-accidents/ and yeah the link is bait to get you to read.

    "If the automobile fatal accident rate were equivalent to GA’s fatal rate, we would kill more than 800,000 people a year and your car insurance would cost $25,000. "

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  • [–] 21 points 1 week ago (13 children)

    The guy who chartered the flight ran this company - https://retention.com/

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  • [–] 16 points 1 week ago (10 children)

    Not really sure how that’s relevant to my comment, it’s still bad for planes to be falling out of the sky and killing multiple children + workers, no matter who chartered the flight.

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  • [–] 31 points 1 week ago (9 children)

    Private jets that crash a lot kill rich assholes.

    So maybe instead of banning them we lower regulations and mandate people over a certain net worth must travel by private jet.

    And also they get exclusive first access to any new submersibles.

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  • [–] 17 points 1 week ago (6 children)

    A 2 year old and a 4 year old died in terror, no amount of billionaires would be worth it.

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  • [+] 3 points 1 week ago (5 children)
  • [–] 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

    There was a scene in a show whose title I can’t recall where a man was in a bus depot talking to a young mother with her child sleeping in her lap.

    She said they were taking the bus because it was a lower carbon option.

    The psychopath pointed out that the best thing she could do for the climate would be to kill her child.

    A child growing up in the West, let alone a privileged one, is the single longest and biggest source of carbon emissions we know of.

    Edit: The show is called Utopia. The original British version.

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  • [–] 72 points 1 week ago (14 children)

    You're a bit confused on the stats

    The planes that have the most accidents are general aviation (GA) planes, not chartered private jets like this

    GA is the actual small planes. 2-4 seaters usually. It's also the least experiences pilots, usually pilots building hours to be in the airlines or charters

    Charters follow a lot, but not all, of the same safety regulations as commercial airlines. They do still have more accidents, for a variety of reasons

    Charter companies play an important role in the pilot pipeline. Many commercial pilots work at charters while they build hours to get their ATP to be able to work at a commercial airline

    If they couldn't work at a charter, they would have to instead fly in circles to build hours. A suboptmial outcome

    The consequences of it failing are just too high.

    Mile per mile, cars are more deadly. If the concern is safety, you'd have to start there

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  • [–] 3 points 6 days ago (1 child)

    Cars are only deadly because any idiot and his dog can get a licence. If car drivers had to go through as much training and rigorous standards as pilots, cars would be safer, since they can't fall out of the sky.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 days ago

    Cars also have much tighter tolerances than planes. A 1 second lapse on the highway could easily cause a multi-car collision.

    Planes have this during takeoff and landing. But once they are in the air, maintain a much larger distance between themselves and any hazard. When something goes wrong, pilots have a long time to fix it.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 days ago

    Ugh. These businesses jets are considered General Aviation. Part 135 and Part 91 get lumped together in the stats. Part 121 is airliners and Freightliners.

    General Aviation is considered statistically slightly safer than motorcycles, but single engine and multiengine get lumped in together because of how different parts of US aviation is governed.

    Source: private pilot pursuing my commercial rating.

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  • [+] -11 points 6 days ago (10 children)

    Mile per mile, cars are more deadly. If the concern is safety, you'd have to start there

    Because our skys don't look like this

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  • [–] 21 points 6 days ago (7 children)

    No. Because the aviation industry doesn’t like to make mistakes twice.

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  • [–] 12 points 6 days ago (5 children)

    Except for Boeing, they double down and fuck up their designs even more.

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  • [–] 3 points 6 days ago (2 children)

    Well, not wrong, at least, they do it in new an innovative ways every time. Rarely do I see it the same boring catastrophic failure.

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  • [–] 3 points 6 days ago

    Meanwhile, the auto industry manages absolutely every issue as a simple cost of business. Does the cost to fix/replace/prevent an issue cost more than the lawsuit or fine? If yes, then it doesn't get done until they're forced to fix the issue.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 days ago (1 child)

    You should take a look at ADSB data above JFK or ATL if you think that's the case. The density of planes is incredible. Planes are landing and departing as quickly as possible

    Further, heavy traffic is less fatal. Cars are moving slowly enough that most accidents are minor

    I would also point out, it isn't close. Cars are something like 20 times more dangerous per mile than commercial aviation

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  • [–] 1 point 6 days ago

    Yeah I meant more that in car traffic there's every-fucking-one driving their 2 ton shitbox in an unpredictable way causing chaos. Think of some Corusant scenes in Star wars movies where you see thousands upon thousands of speeders flying on many levels in long lines, and one mistake will crash few speeders a kilometer down to the ground

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  • [–] 38 points 6 days ago (2 children)

    I love how they call them 'business jets' instead of millionaire transports. because honestly.

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  • [–] 7 points 6 days ago (1 child)

    They're almost always owned by businesses, hence the moniker

    Lot of companies use them to transport executives, or companies own the planes to sell charter flights

    It's exceptionally rare for an individual to own one

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  • [–] 20 points 1 week ago

    Maybe they should be outlawed for environmental reasons, but private jets operated by professional service providers as in this case aren't the "small planes" with the high crash rates. It's the ones with piston engines and inexperienced owner-pilots that crash a lot.

    Even those are roughly comparable to cars in terms of injury and death rates for a comparable trip. Driving is one of the most dangerous things the average person does, so that's not exactly good, but it seems to be within most peoples' risk tolerance.

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  • [–] 25 points 6 days ago (8 children)

    So apparently the rates of crashes in general aviation are set off by drunk pilots in Alaska specifically. If you exclude alcohol-related crashes in Alaska, general aviation starts to look a lot safer.

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  • [–] 7 points 6 days ago (3 children)

    Can we exclude drunk drivers from California (since it's the biggest offender) and call cars safer then? We can't remove inconvenient data and people don't just drink and fly in one state.

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  • [–] 6 points 6 days ago

    Alaskan aviation is very different from the rest of the country

    They literally are not even flying with the same rules and regulations

    It's still far safer than driving, but Alaskan aviation is not as safe as the rest of the country, and should be separated out due to the different rules

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  • [–] 5 points 6 days ago (1 child)

    Planes have a max gross takeoff weight that much be followed at all times, unless you're in Alaska

    Alaskan pilots kept crashing because they skipped fuel to fit in another passenger so often the FAA said it was better for them to fly overweight than with absolute minimum fuel

    There are a handful of regulations with an "except in Alaska" carveout

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  • [–] 21 points 6 days ago (7 children)

    As opposed to cars, which have famously few consequences when things go wrong.

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  • [–] 18 points 6 days ago (4 children)

    As much as I'd love to see them made illegal, I don't remember the last time I saw an SUV or oversized pickup truck make a 20 foot crater.

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  • [–] 5 points 6 days ago

    I remember sometime back that some rich bloke was talking about cutting cost for maintenance in airliners. Part of me wants to say that somebody got the message and started cutting corners for private jets first.

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  • [–] 9 points 6 days ago (3 children)

    Nobody needs X is a moot point. You also don't need the vast majority of your possessions. Some things are simply nice to have, especially when you can afford them. There are just things that you don't like other people having.

    Also, the chance of you dying on a place crash either as a passenger or a person on the ground is astronomically small. 104 people died in a car crash yesterday in the US alone and this is true for every single day of the year.

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  • [–] 4 points 6 days ago* (2 children)

    104 people dying in a car crash yesterday says jack shit about plane safety when you haven’t normalized the data for the fact that a lot more people are driving than flying.

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  • [–] 4 points 6 days ago (3 children)

    20 year-old co-pilot...Is that unusual for a private jet crew?

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  • [–] 9 points 6 days ago

    Yeah apparently she was kind of a prodigy, actually from Palm Beach where the crash was. There's a news segment from a few years ago featuring her and it is at a high school like two miles from the crash site.

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  • [–] 11 points 6 days ago (2 children)

    it seems that she was the one understanding the ATC advice properly and trying to get the pilot to navigate around the dangerous weather

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  • [–] 12 points 6 days ago (1 child)

    No, it doesn't seem like that at all. It seems like a normal distribution of labour in a cockpit and good CRM. If you don't know anything about a subject you are allowed to keep your mouth shut and not add to all the pointless speculating around a tragedy.

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  • [–] 3 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

    I don't interpret their comment to imply the other pilot didn't understand, just that her role was to manage the ATC communications which... is exactly what you agree with? The other pilot's duty wasn't to interpret the ATC guidance but to take action.

    Maybe you should keep your mouth shut and reread before yelling at people.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 week ago (2 children)

    Tragic all around, their poor families. When they say planes are safe, they mean the big ones.

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