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.
Why is she always called the co-pilot? It sounds like she made all the decisions/communications at the end.
Where’s the pilot if she’s such a child?
The pilot was flying the plane. They were both doing their jobs.
Because cockpits have ranks, there is generally a captain and a first officer, but even in a dual captain cockpit, there is ALWAYS a pilot in command (colloquialy pilot, always a CPT) and a pilot (colloquial co-pilot, usually an FO). She was not the pilot in command on this flight, and therefore, in colloquial terminology the co pilot.
These roles are also completely independent from the duties of “pilot flying” (at the controls) and “pilot monitoring” (in charge of communication and instrument monitoring).
I think people just talk about her bc young pretty girl. We should honestly probably just let ai fly planes in the future.
It’s exactly what the co-pilot does. Communicating with the ATC, reading instruments and any relevant checklist to the pilot. During an emergency like this, the pilot’s primary job is keep both hands on the stick and do everything in their power to get the plane under control and either land safely or return to a safe altitude until they can land. The co-pilot is the one who takes a step back from controls and gets all relevant information to the pilot and ATC in the tower.
If you’ve ever watched the movie Sully, it’s a decent example where the senior/veteran pilot is attempting what he can with the controls that are responding while the co-pilot goes through the emergency checklist and attempts to restart the engines.
Generally co-pilot refers to the pilot not in command, as opposed to the pilot in command (pic), the roles of pilot flying and pilot monitoring usually change from flight to flight even if the same flight crew sticks together, and occasionally even during a single flight (especially during emergencies, since almost all airlines require the PIC to become the pilot flying, if not already, during an emergency).
Pilot in command never changes during a flight, so co-pilot generally refers to that role split, as opposed to whatever the duties of monitoring and flying happen to be at a given time.
What if they die or parachute out. What if the plane splits in two with the PIC in one half. Can the other half nominate a new PIC.
There’s some subtlety about Sully’s case here. He was captain and pilot monitoring during the takeoff while the first officer was pilot flying.
After the engines failed, Sully used his authority as captain to take over flying.
Pilot Flying is flying the plane. Pilot Monitoring handles the radio and monitors/adjusts systems. The two pilots generally trade off who handles what each flight, but they can also swap during a flight if needed.
She was Pilot Monitoring, which is sometimes called co-pilot. Her job was to handle everything else during the emergency while the Pilot Flying tried to regain control.
The other important distinction is captain and first officer, with the latter often being described as “co-pilot”. The captain has final authority and primary legal responsibility for the flight regardless of who is operating which controls at any given time.
I had a whole paragraph about that distinction, but I deleted it to not confuse things further. Co-pilot can refer to the supporting pilot or the junior pilot. In this case, she appeared to be both.
The real point was that during an upset, the pilot at the controls doesn’t have time to talk to the outside world or really do anything besides try to recover.
I think that in these types of small planes, the more experienced pilot does the actual flying and the less experienced one is monitoring everything, including all the communications. So the main pilot was busy trying to figure out if there was any way to get out of the trouble they were in.
That’s not really true the pilots will trade off on legs each one swapping roles so the copilot can become equally proficient in the airplane and move up to captain.
The more experienced pilot still has the role of teacher however.