A 20-year-old living her dream and 55-year-old dad: The pilots who died in Florida Learjet crash

The pilots who were flying the Learjet private business jet which crashed in Palm Beach County, Florida, on Sunday afternoon have now been identified as 20-year-old Nathalia Filgueiras and 55-year-old Jeff Gregory.

The plane was travelling from Austin, Texas, to the Bahamas when it dropped 27,000 feet in one minute and crashed into a busy six-lane road in a residential neighbourhood near Cresthaven at around 12.50pm local time.

All nine people on board were sadly killed, including Texas tech entrepreneur Adam Robinson, his wife, two children, their nanny, two friends and the two pilots.

The captain was 55-year-old dad of three Jeff Gregory

Gregory was a 55-year-old airline captain from Pennsylvania, who was serving as the captain of the Learjet. He has been remembered by his family as a “devoted father, husband and lifelong aviation enthusiast” following the tragedy and is survived by his wife, Cheryl, and three children.

He was flying for Upper Jets, a private jet firm that was operating the Learjet. The captain previously worked for East Coast Jets, who said in a statement: “We are deeply saddened to learn that Captain Jeff Gregory was among those who lost their lives in yesterday’s tragic aviation accident in Palm Beach.”

Credit: Jeff Gregory/Facebook

One of his longtime childhood friends, David Peters, told the US Sun he always dreamed of becoming a pilot and trained in the 1990s before embarking on a decades-long career in aviation.  

“I know he worked hard to become a pilot and it was something he truly loved and poured his life and heart into,” he said, adding that Gregory was a “very diligent and dependable” who “loved wearing his leather bomber jacket”. 

Gregory was a religious man and grew up attending Limerick Chapel in Pennsylvania. His parents worked at the church, and the plane captain was heard on air traffic control audio repeating the Lord’s prayer moments before the crash, saying: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.”

20-year-old Nathalia Filgueiras just got her pilot license  

The co-pilot was 20-year-old Nathalia Filgueiras, an aspiring commercial airline pilot who got her pilot license in October 2023 when she was still 17 and still in high school, before she even got her driving license. She had been working as a pilot for nine months, and was waiting until she was old enough to work for American Airlines. 

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“I definitely do brag because people say, ‘Oh, you can’t drive,’ and I’m like, ‘Yeah, but I can fly’,” she told CBS12 at the time.

Credit: Nathalia Filgueiras/Threads

She attended West Boca Raton High School and began official pilot lessons in 2020, but had already been taught by her dad, who taught her to fly for fun in 2018. He owned a small Beechcraft Bonanza plane, and going out in the plane as a child sparked her love for aviation.

Filgueiras attended the pilot school American Flyers, and the School District of Palm Beach County’s Aviation Academy paid for her pilot license. Her stepfather, Thiago Corteleti, told The New York Post she had 1,300 hours of flying experience, but he and her mother didn’t want her to become a pilot. 

The 20-year-old’s mother, Camila, said: “I wanted her to live her dream, but I knew that her dream was going to be the thing that would take her away from me. I knew that a plane was gonna take her away from me. I always knew it but I was so proud of her. I know she was living her dream.

Credit: Nathalia Filgueiras/Threads

“One day after flying with him, she came home, and we were in our room, and she walked in, and she said, ‘I’m gonna be a pilot’ and I said, ‘No, you won’t’. Thiago looked at me, and said, ‘If that’s what she wants to be, she will be a pilot,’ and I was like, ‘No she won’t’.”

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Featured image credit: Jeff Gregory/Facebook and Nathalia Filgueiras/Threads