Flight safety

Learjet 60 N722BD: what is known about the Florida crash

Published November 2, 2026. Investigation ongoing: this article will be updated.

What happened

The aircraft took off from Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in Texas, bound for North Eleuthera in the Bahamas, according to the FAA, the US civil aviation authority.² Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the crash happened at 12:50 p.m. local time and that everyone on board died.³

According to The Associated Press, citing air traffic control recordings and flight tracking data, the jet was flying east at 35,000 feet. The pilots reported turbulence, icing and precipitation and asked to climb another 2,000 feet. Shortly afterwards the airplane entered a very steep descent, at 10,000 and then 20,000 feet per minute, reaching about 30,000. One of the pilots declared an emergency and reported that the aircraft was above its speed limit. The airplane banked sharply to the right before impact.³

The impact occurred near Military Trail in Greenacres, Palm Beach County, and left a crater beside the road. As of the latest information available, there were no reports of injuries on the ground.^3,4 About 600 residents of a nearby mobile home community were expected to be relocated during the work at the site.²

The aircraft

The FAA registry identifies N722BD as a Learjet 60, serial number 271, registered to LR60271 LLC of Wilmington, Delaware.¹ AIN magazine reports that it was a 2004 aircraft.⁴ The year of manufacture field is blank in the official registry.

What is still unknown

The cause is unknown. The investigation is led by the NTSB, the US agency that investigates accidents, with support from the FAA.² Ice, turbulence and storms in the region were mentioned in the radio communications and in press coverage, but none of them has been officially named as a cause. A pilot's report describes the conditions at that moment. It does not, on its own, explain what happened next.

The NTSB scheduled a news conference in West Palm Beach for this Monday.³ When we published this article we did not yet have its content. In investigations of this kind, the preliminary report usually comes out in about a month, and the final report, with the probable cause, takes much longer. Until then, we recommend being wary of any definitive explanation, including those circulating on social media.

The Learjet 60

The Learjet 60 is a twin-engine business jet certificated on January 15, 1993 under Part 25, the US standard for transport category airplanes. The data below come from the NTSB report on the 2008 accident involving the model.⁵

The model's record in the official data

The NTSB publishes a list of all US civil aircraft involved in accidents between 2005 and 2024.⁶ It has 28,514 records, and the Learjet 60 appears in 8 of them:

The November 1, 2026 accident is not yet in these tables, which end in 2024, nor in the NTSB's search database. With it, the totals would be 3 fatal accidents and 15 deaths.

The two fatal accidents in the period were:

• September 19, 2008, Columbia, South Carolina (N999LJ). Four dead and two seriously injured in a rejected takeoff. The NTSB concluded that the probable cause was inadequate tire maintenance, with tires that failed from underinflation, combined with the captain's decision to reject the takeoff after V1 speed. The report also pointed to deficiencies in the design and certification of the model's thrust reverser system.⁵
• May 5, 2013, Valencia, Venezuela (N119FD). Two dead and aircraft destroyed. Because it happened outside the United States, the NTSB record gives neither a cause nor a phase of flight.⁶

Of the 8 accidents, 6 have a recorded phase of flight, and all six happened during takeoff, landing or taxi.⁶ Before this period, the NTSB database records an accident with serious injuries in Troy, Alabama, in 2001, also involving the thrust reversers.^5,7 In a search of the full database, from 1992 to 2023, the model totals 15 accidents and 4 incidents.⁷

These numbers are not a worldwide census. The NTSB only records US aircraft and foreign cases in which it took part.

Is there an official accident rate for the Learjet 60?

We did not find one, and here is why. A rate needs two pieces of information: how many accidents happened and how many hours were flown. The first is public. The second, by model, is not: the FAA's annual survey publishes hours by aircraft type, such as "turbojet", not by specific model.⁸ In 2024 it estimated a population of 17,520 turbojets and about 5.2 million hours flown.⁸

For that reason we chose not to publish our own rate for the model. It would depend on an estimate of hours that does not come from an official source. Comparing models by accident count alone is also misleading, because aircraft that fly more tend to accumulate more occurrences.

What does exist are official rates by type of operation. These are the NTSB figures for 2024, per 100,000 flight hours:⁶

These rates apply to each type of operation as a whole, with all aircraft included. They do not tell you the Learjet 60's rate. General aviation ranges from single-engine trainers to corporate jets.

The general aviation trend is downward: the NTSB fatal accident rate fell from 1.10 in 2015 to 0.72 in 2024.⁶ The FAA reports 0.68 for fiscal year 2024, an estimate, and says it was the lowest rate since it began tracking the figure in 2009.⁹ The difference between the two numbers comes from different calendars and data bases.

How we will update this article

We will correct this article as the NTSB releases information. When the preliminary report and the official case record come out, the data above will be reviewed.

Sources

1. FAA, aircraft registry, N722BD: registry.faa.gov
2. FAA and Palm Beach County information reported by WPTV, Nov. 1, 2026: wptv.com
3. The Associated Press, published by NPR, Nov. 2, 2026: npr.org
4. AIN, "Florida Learjet Crash Claims Nine Lives": ainonline.com
5. NTSB, report AAR-10/02, Learjet 60 N999LJ, Columbia, South Carolina: ntsb.gov
6. NTSB, Aviation Accident Statistics 2005-2024 (tables 1, 6, 9, 10, 17, 26 and 29): ntsb.gov
7. NTSB, CAROL database, search by make Learjet and model 60, accessed Nov. 2, 2026: my.ntsb.gov
8. FAA, General Aviation and Part 135 Activity Surveys, CY 2024, tables 1.3 and 2.1: faa.gov
9. FAA, General Aviation Safety Fact Sheet, May 1, 2025: faa.gov