Parts of a business jet likely started to break off even before it slammed into the ground and erupted in a ball of flames in South Florida, killing all nine people on board, a federal investigator said Monday.

Video recorded by passersby captured the Bahamas-bound Learjet’s rapid nosedive Sunday afternoon before it exploded in Greenacres, about 7 miles (11 kilometers) southwest of West Palm Beach. Flames flickered around chunks of pavement lining the crater as shocked residents looked on in horror. Thick black smoke engulfed the crash site and little remained of the plane.

“Debris was everywhere. Debris hit my house. Everything was on fire. The road was on fire,” Anthony Blackmon, who lives near the crash site, told NBC affiliate WTVJ. “I’ve always seen it on the news, never thought it would happen so close to somebody like how it happened today.”

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[–] 3 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

Unsurprising.

“We are in an overspeed condition descending 20,000 feet per minute,” the pilot radioed.

When an aircraft is overspeed, it’s going faster than designed and that exerts extra force on the parts that stick out (like wings and control surfaces). Too much overspeed and of course parts start to break off. That doesn’t mean those parts had anything to do with the original cause of the descent (which seems like ice and weather).

There’s nothing new to report until the passenger list is disclosed or the crash investigation is concluded, this is just a nothing headline looking for eyeballs.

Edit: Here’s the single frame before impact from the dashcam video that captured the crash. Looks like no wings by that point.

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