A day after the Learjet went down in flames in Florida, its co-pilot has been named as Nathalia Gadelha, 20, a young woman who earned her pilot's license when she was still a high school student, the New York Post reported. Recordings of air traffic control exchanges capture her pleading for assistance in the moments before the aircraft hit the ground.
Sunday afternoon, the Learjet 60 bound for the Bahamas after departing Austin, Texas, went into a steep nosedive, dropping at a rate exceeding 20,000 feet each minute before impact within Palm Beach County. The pilot's mother, Camila, along with her stepfather, told The Post that Gadelha was the co-pilot aboard the flight.
A Palm Beach County native, the young pilot drew local media coverage in October 2023, when, at 17, she earned her license as a private pilot, before she held a driver's license.
"I definitely do brag because people say, 'Oh, you can't drive,' and I'm like, 'Yeah, but I can fly,'" she said in a CBS12 interview from that period.
As a senior at West Boca Raton High School, she explained, her lessons had begun back in 2020, and her father, who took up flying as a hobby in 2018, also taught her.
On social media, her mother frequently documented the family's flights together aboard private jets.
Since the start of ground school, she explained in that earlier report, she had flown daily, accumulating 88 hours in the air before she cleared the knowledge test.
With the program's launch in 2023, the cost of her license was covered by the Aviation Academy operated by Palm Beach County's school district.
"I like being different than everyone, so to me I think it's cool that like it's not really an opportunity," Gadelha said.
"I just didn't do it, and this is how it ended up. But I think it's cool. Some people think that it's weird that I can fly planes, but I can't drive a car, I mean I can but, a lot of people think it's funny. I think it's funny, and I now want my [driver's] license really bad," she added.
Gadelha trained at American Flyers, a flying school headquartered in Addison, Texas, with another location at Pompano Beach, Florida, and dreamed of building a career as a pilot for a commercial airline.
Recently, she posted a video to social media showing Justin, her boyfriend, flying alongside her.
"How often do you see 2 pilots under 21 with a commercial, multi-engine, instrument, CFI/CFI-I [Certified Flight Instructor/Certified Flight Instructor – Instrument]," she wrote.
