All nine people aboard a Bahamas-bound private jet were killed when it crashed and erupted in flames in Palm Beach County, Florida, on Sunday afternoon.
The aircraft was a Learjet 60 flying to the Bahamas from Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in Texas, the Federal Aviation Administration said. It came down near a residential area and exploded on impact, CNN reported.
US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy confirmed the deaths and called the crash a “horrific tragedy”.
No deaths on the ground, but 600 displaced
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said the aircraft “looked like a missile going down”. There are no reports of anyone on the ground being killed, he said, though the crash left a significant debris field scattered across a wide area.
About 600 people need shelter — not because their homes were destroyed, but because the crash scene is blocking the entrance to a mobile home park and residents cannot stay there, a county official told CNN.
The crash occurred near Military Trail, between Cresthaven Boulevard and 10th Avenue North.
Investigation
The FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating. NTSB investigators were due at the site on Sunday and Monday, with a news conference planned for Monday.
By CNN’s account this is the second-deadliest crash in the United States this year on NTSB records, after a skydiving plane crash in Butler, Missouri, in June that killed 12. It is also the worst crash involving a Learjet 60 on Flight Safety Foundation data; the previous worst killed four on takeoff from Columbia, South Carolina, in 2008.
The jet is registered to a Delaware LLC and was listed as available for charter.
Not reported
Officials have not identified any of the nine, and have not said how many were passengers and how many were crew. No cause has been given. Hiru News, which carried the story in Sri Lanka on Monday, likewise reports the identities as undisclosed. Neither filing names an operator or reports whether any Sri Lankan nationals were aboard.
Note: several older crashes with the same death toll — small-aircraft accidents in the Bahamas that also killed nine — circulate in search results. This is a separate event: a Learjet 60, in Palm Beach County, Florida, on 1 November 2026.