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By Marni Rose McFall
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Nine people on board a Learjet 60 aircraft were killed on Sunday when the plane crashed in Palm Beach County, about nine miles from President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
The co-pilot of the flight has since been identified by family members as Nathalia Gadelha Filgueiras. The 20-year-old grew up in Palm Beach County and has been flying since she was 17.
The captain of the flight has been named as 55-year-old Jeffrey Gregory.
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Following Filgueiras’s identification, several social media commentators posted attacks on female pilots, prompting criticism from aviation experts.
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Becky Lutte, an associate professor and chair in the Department of Aeronautics at the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, who is on the leadership team of ERAU Boeing Center for Aviation and Aerospace Safety, told Newsweek: "If you are in the seat, you earned the seat. All pilots must earn the appropriate certificates and ratings for the operation."
Looking at the dynamics in the cockpit, Lutte said: "The Pilot in Command has final authority over aircraft operation, but each pilot on the flight deck has an active role in safety."
"Pilots often alternate between the pilot flying and pilot monitoring roles," Lutte added. "The pilot monitoring typically handles ATC communications, monitors the flight path, altitude, airspeed, aircraft configuration and automation, performs checklists and additional duties."
She pointed to the NTSB investigation into all relevant aspects of the flight and emphasized that the public should respect this process.
"For the victims and their families and friends, be respectful of all who perished. This is a heartbreaking event for the entire aviation community," added Lutte.
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The gender or race of pilots has been a focal point in discourse in the wake of several past aviation accidents. In 2025, just days after the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, American Airlines Flight 5342 collided with a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter over the Potomac River in Washington, D.C. All 67 aboard both aircraft were killed in what marked the deadliest U.S. air disaster since the crash of American Airlines Flight 587 in 2001.
In the wake of the air disaster, conversations quickly focused on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives within the Federal Aviation Administration and the Department of Transportation.
The president said after the crash that he had "very strong opinions" on why the crash occurred, and pointed to DEI policies while discussing the helicopter and traffic control, in remarks that came shortly after his administration ordered a rollback of a number of DEI policies.
The NTSB identified operational and systemic failures involving the FAA and U.S. Army; it did not identify DEI practices as a cause.
A similar thread played out on social media after the Learjet crash this past weekend.
How The Conversation Has Played Out Online
In a video that has been viewed more than a million times across multiple posts on X, numerologist Gary Grinberg said: "I’ve had a rule for a while, if I get on a plane and I see a female pilot, I’m off the plane."
"Stick your a*** home, in the kitchen, I don’t give a f***, you are not flying a plane." He called on airlines to disclose if pilots were female, writing in a follow-up post, "I am the FINAL BOSS Of misogyny."
As the video circulated online, other users posted criticism of female pilots. Filgueiras was serving as co-pilot alongside captain Jeffrey Gregory, but investigators have not established who was flying the aircraft or what caused the crash.
"Women shouldn’t be pilots, but we shouldn’t make it a hobby to mock death," Aidan Nox, founder of the AF Post, wrote on X. Meanwhile, Richard Cooper, who is the author of the book The Unplugged Alpha, wrote in a post on X viewed over 280,000 times "Why can women request women only Uber drivers, and that's not sexist, but if a man wants a 50 yr. old male pilot, that's sexist?"
On X, there were multiple posts claiming that female pilots and so-called "DEI hires" are more likely to crash.
Studies have indicated gendered differences in general aviation crashes. A 2001 study from Johns Hopkins examined crash circumstances between 1983 and 1997 involving pilots aged 40—63. Among the crashes examined, those involving male pilots more often involved inattention or flawed decision-making, while those involving female pilots more often involved aircraft-handling errors. The study does not establish comparative crash risk among today’s professional pilots.
Susan P. Baker, MPH, professor of health policy and management at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, was quoted in that study as saying, "The crash rate for male pilots, as for motor vehicle drivers, exceeds that of crashes of female pilots."
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman defended Filgueiras on Monday, citing his experience of more than 20 years and 8,000 flight hours in similar aircraft, and addressed criticism of her distress calls, which he said was "most troubling."
"She was the second-in-command (SIC), and while she was empowered to point out mistakes as part of good crew resource management, she was doing her job, communicating with ATC right to the end in a terrifying situation," Isaacman wrote on X.
The conservative commentator Matt Walsh also criticized the response online and said that while he is "not at all shy" about blaming DEI, "I see no DEI angle on this jet crash."
"Trying to blame the girl for the crash is absurd and baseless," he said, adding that some of the comments that have been made have been "callous to an unhuman degree."
What We Know About the Florida Plane Crash
The FAA told Newsweek on Monday morning that the plane had departed from Austin, Texas, and was headed to the Bahamas.
"The FAA and National Transportation Safety Board will investigate. The NTSB is in charge of the investigation and will provide all updates," an FAA spokesperson said.
Audio recorded moments before the crash captures someone in the cockpit reporting "moderate turbulence" and adding that the crew was "managing the ice."
Flight analysis indicates that the jet was plummeting hundreds of feet per second before crashing just moments after a mayday call was issued at 12:47 p.m.
The final transmission heard in the recording, which came 35 seconds after the initial mayday announcement, was: "We’re out of time."
On Monday, NTSB member Tom Chapman said that the board is in the "very early stages of the investigation."
He declined to speculate on a cause but acknowledged that investigators were looking into whether ice and turbulence factored into the deadly crash.
Contact Newsweek editors for this story: Daniel Orton and Mike Hirst.
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