Learjet co-pilot in fatal Florida crash ID’d as Nathalia Filgueiras, 20, who got her license in high school
By Alex Diaz and Anthony Blair
The doomed Learjet co-pilot heard pleading for help in harrowing air traffic control audio before the fiery Florida crash has been identified as Nathalia Gadelha Filgueiras – a 20-year-old who got her pilot license while still in high school.
Filgueiras’s mother, Camila, and her stepfather confirmed to The Post that she was the co-pilot flying a Learjet 60 from Austin, Texas, to the Bahamas when it entered a steep nosedive – plummeting at over 20,000 feet per minute – and smashed into the ground in Palm Beach County on Sunday afternoon.
The grieving mom said that her daughter, who would have turned 21 in January, had been working as a commercial pilot for nine months.
“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,” Camila said from her home in Palm Beach County.
“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,” she said.
Camila’s husband, Thiago Corteleti, 44, told The Post that Filgueiras had 1,300 hours of flying experience.
She texted her boyfriend, Justin, just 10 minutes before the plane crashed, he said.
“She just said, ‘I’ve got turbulence, I’ve got ice,’” Corteleti said.
The middle of three sisters, Filgueiras dreamed of becoming a pilot from a young age after being taken out in her father’s small Beechcraft Bonanza.
“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,” Camila said through tears.
“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,’” she said.