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.
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.