A Learjet 60 business jet carrying nine people dropped out of a stormy sky and slammed into a road in Palm Beach County, Florida, on Sunday, Nov. 1, killing everyone aboard, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said. The jet had left Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in Texas and had a flight plan to North Eleuthera Airport in the Bahamas when it went down near Cresthaven at about 12:50 p.m. ET (9:50 a.m. PT), the Federal Aviation Administration said, according to NBC News. Duffy called the crash a “horrific tragedy” in a post on X and wrote that all nine people on board had died.

“Please join me in praying for the families and loved ones of those we lost,” Duffy said, according to NBC 6 South Florida, adding that the FAA had sent a team to support the investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board. As of Sunday night, officials had not released the names of the people aboard, NBC News reported. An Austin-Bergstrom spokesperson, Jim Reynolds, described the jet as a private aircraft but could not say who flew on it, according to the AP.

What the cockpit radio captured. The jet flew east at 35,000 feet when pilots reported turbulence, icing and precipitation and asked to climb 2,000 feet, the Associated Press reported, citing air traffic control recordings and flight-tracking data in a story republished by NBC 6. A pilot told controllers about “light, clear ice” and “moderate turbulence,” the AP said, and NBC News reported that the pilot called the ice “manageable” about two minutes before the emergency. Moments later, a pilot issued a mayday call and reported a descent of 10,000 feet per minute, then 20,000 feet per minute and an “overspeed condition,” according to the AP. NBC News said the final transmission included a warning that the jet would hit the ground, followed by a scream; this desk has not quoted that line in full out of respect for the families.

How fast it fell. The accounts of the descent rate differ by source. The AP said the dive reached as much as 30,000 feet per minute, pushing the plane beyond its design limits. The aviation news site AVweb, citing ADS-B tracking data, said the jet had climbed to 41,000 feet, descended to about 35,000 feet near Naples, briefly climbed, then entered a steep descending right turn, with a peak descent rate above 32,000 feet per minute before tracking stopped. ABC News posted on X that the FAA described a dive of about 350 feet per second, or roughly 21,000 feet per minute.

The weather. Rain pounded the region on Sunday, and the National Weather Service had a flood watch in effect through Monday afternoon, the AP reported. AVweb said a nearby weather station recorded thunderstorms in the vicinity, three miles of visibility and wind gusts of 19 knots about 15 minutes before the crash, and that the jet appears to have passed through a stronger storm cell several minutes before the dive began. DeWitt Ingram, a Learjet type-rated captain who runs an aviation consulting firm, told CBS12 that thunderstorms could have exposed the jet to severe turbulence. “If the pilot flew into the tops of one of the thunderstorms, in that very rough air, he could have damaged the airplane to the point where he lost control,” Ingram said. CBS12 noted that no one has confirmed that the jet met those conditions, and investigators have not named a cause.

On the ground. Dashcam video showed the jet plunging toward the roadway and exploding, leaving a burning crater in the pavement, NBC News reported. “It looked like a missile going down. It left a big crater on the side of the road,” Gov. Ron DeSantis told reporters, according to NBC News, which said he called it a “cataclysmic” crash. DeSantis said the impact threw debris a “pretty significant distance,” but no one had reported anyone hurt or killed on the ground. Aki Kuusisto, whose dashcam recorded one widely shared clip, told CBS News: “I heard a whistling noise, a big bang and I saw a fireball,” according to a CBS News post on X.

Nearby residents described the shock. “Debris hit my house,” Anthony Blackmon, who said he stood about 500 feet away, told NBC 6. Roger Forcelle said the jet passed over his home just before the crash. “It shook the whole house. It went right over us and crashed probably less than half a mile from where I live,” he told the station. CBS12 reported power outages in the area after the explosion, though it said officials had not confirmed how widespread they ran.

Watch: officials brief reporters at the scene, via @PBCountySheriff on X

If the embed does not load, it shows as a plain link to the original post.

@PBCountySheriff on X, Nov. 1 (3:10 p.m. PT): a vertical video of about four minutes from the news conference where Gov. DeSantis joined county officials to describe debris, road closures and evacuations. This desk viewed a still from the clip before embedding · original post

Watch: the driver whose dashcam caught the crash, via @CBSNews on X

@CBSNews on X, Nov. 1 (5:43 p.m. PT): a clip of about 27 seconds in which Aki Kuusisto describes what he saw and heard. The clip carries a distressing-content warning and includes his dashcam footage of the rainy road. This desk viewed a still before embedding · original post

Evacuations and closures. County officials worked to find shelter for about 600 people from a mobile home park next to the wreckage. “We have about 600 people that we have to make sure that they have shelter tonight,” said Joel Flores, the Palm Beach County commissioner for District 3, according to NBC 6, and Flores told the station the Red Cross stood by to help; NBC News also reported the mobile home park evacuation. The sheriff’s office closed Military Trail in both directions between Cresthaven Boulevard and 10th Avenue North until further notice, CBS12 reported, and CBS12 later reported that John I. Leonard High School, near the site, would stay closed on Monday.

Where exactly it happened. Sources place the crash in slightly different spots. The FAA said the jet came down near Cresthaven, and the sheriff’s office described the Greenacres area, according to the AP, which put Greenacres about 7 miles southwest of West Palm Beach. CBS12 first gave the location as near South Military Trail and Marilyn Drive, and the NTSB referred to a crash in Lake Worth Beach. Several unincorporated neighborhoods and city lines meet along that stretch of Military Trail.

The aircraft. FAA records list the jet’s owner as a limited liability company in Delaware, NBC News reported; CBS12 named the company as LR60271 LLC of Wilmington. NBC News said the call sign heard on the radio recording ended in “Bravo Delta.” Bombardier, which builds the Learjet, said it felt “deeply saddened by this tragic event,” and that it would not comment on a possible cause until the investigation ends and would fully support investigators, according to NBC News.

Claims circulating online. Some widely shared posts on X described the dive as deliberate or compared the crater to a missile strike. None of those posts offered evidence, and no official cited here suggested anything other than an accident under investigation. DeSantis used the missile comparison only to describe how the jet looked as it fell. This desk did not embed or link those posts.

What comes next. The NTSB said on X at 2:24 p.m. PT that investigators would arrive at the site on Sunday and Monday morning and that it would hold a media briefing in West Palm Beach on Monday, with the time and place still to come. The NTSB typically issues a preliminary report within weeks of a crash and a final cause much later. This desk will add the names of the victims and any NTSB findings as officials release them.

How this desk reported this story. This story relies on saved copies of reports from NBC News, NBC 6 South Florida (including the AP story it republished), AVweb and CBS12, plus posts on X from Duffy, the NTSB, the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office, ABC News and CBS News read on X, with times converted from UTC to PT (UTC−8). The AP’s own site blocked this desk, so its reporting comes from the copy on NBC 6. Times use Pacific Time (PT) unless marked ET.