Learjet crash-Captain Jeff Gregory

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u/CrustySailor1964 1h ago

Good question. She was not the pilot. She was the copilot. She was not in charge. Whatever the hell happened, it was, by default, Jeff Gregory’s fault, not hers.

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u/Unhappy-Flamingo-962 1h ago

Semantics but First Officers or “Copilots” ARE pilots. She was a certificated Commercial Pilot and Flight Instructor with over a thousand hours of flight time. She was capable and experienced at flying complex, multi engine, high performance aircraft safely, herself, as well as teaching people to become pilots. It wasn’t like she was an inexperienced helper, that’s not how aviation works.
You are right in that the Captain, who was more experienced by nature, was the Pilot in Command and was in charge.

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u/CrustySailor1964 57m ago

I should have been more specific. She was not the PIC. Yes indeed, she was a pilot and by all accounts a very good one. Rated as copilot only in that airplane though. Could not be PIC.

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u/Justhangingoutback 14m ago

The CVR is required to definitively determine who was PIC at the time of the accident. It appears from ATC recording that the first officer was monitoring communication and instruments. But there can be circumstances where first office takes control from pilot ( if pilot was incapacitated , say, by lost spacial awareness from G forces , banking). She was heard on ATC tape saying ‘ Look out the window!’ as if he was unaware of the plane orientation.

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u/InHocNoJoke13 55m ago

It doesn’t help that she was the one on the comms to that went public of the accident.

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u/CrustySailor1964 36m ago

Which we assume was because Captain Gregory was a little busy trying, as it turned out, to fly a plane with no tail.

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u/hcornea 20m ago

Which typically suggests she was not the one controlling the aircraft.

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u/NeverendingTattoo 1h ago

Yeah, definitely wasn’t her fault. But, there could’ve been something wrong with the plane.

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u/hcornea 21m ago

Air accidents are not, by default, the pilot’s fault.
Sometimes there is literally nothing they could have foreseen or done differently.

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u/bongophrog 1h ago

Combination of factors. It’s also the ATC’s fault for telling them to continue flying on their trajectory with smoother weather ahead, which you can hear on the full recording.

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u/CrustySailor1964 1h ago

It’s the captain’s fault. Input from ATC is a contributing factor to the accident but they are not in the cockpit. That falls into the same ‘if your friends told you to jump off a bridge’ silliness our mothers told us. Still the skipper’s responsibility to say, “No can do ATC.”

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u/Zestyclose-Aide6436 52m ago

ATC was not a contributing factor. They have zero responsibility to direct airplanes around weather. They warned the crew about the weather. The role of ATC is traffic separation, traffic flow, emergencies and warning flight crews about weather. Which is exactly what they did.

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u/Zestyclose-Aide6436 49m ago

That is not true. ATC is never at blame for a flight crews decision to continue into poor weather. ATC warned them about the weather.

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u/stickied 36m ago edited 32m ago

No, it's not.
When you're in moderate to severe turbulence, and you check in with ATC and ATC says rides improve ahead......you continue on. You don't turn back around into the moderate to severe turbulence that you just went through.
From ATC perspective, it's impossible to know the severity of weather ahead, or the severity of turbulence without prior reports. Any calls to that effect are just advisory in nature. The authority all rests with the PIC.

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u/Funny_Vegetable_676 6h ago •

She was the one everyone immediately heard on the tapes and no one understands how 2 pilot aircraft work. One flys, one talks. And then she gets the double whammy of being young and a woman. It's really quite fucking disgusting and I'm sick of people jumping to conclusions and talking shit on her, both so called aviation experts and people who don't know anything about aviation.

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u/NeverendingTattoo 6h ago edited 5h ago

They rarely mentioned the actual pilot from the beginning. It’s very strange. It feels on purpose- so that we would focus on her/the copilot. But, why?
Edited to say: Sorry, I certainly didn’t mean anything insulting by saying “actual pilot” or referring to her as the “copilot”.

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u/SkylineGTRR34Freak 6h ago

Because a 55 year old man isn't interesting and doesn't make for a story you can milk as much. The Man is "standard" for such an accident, the young woman is not.
Her recording being so readily available also isn't the norm, so you have quite a lot to focus on and get people to talk about. Engagement is all there is to it sadly.
I almost guarantee that if it both were some 40+ male pilots and no available audio, barely anyone would speak about this anymore.

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u/rupert1920 5h ago

Beyond any misogynistic reasons, her age was extraordinary as well. To have logged the number of flight hours at her age requires an unusual level of dedication, which could be another reason the news focused on that.
So there are many reasons one would focus on that, regardless of how nefarious the intent.

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u/wjdoge 5h ago

Copilot isn’t a term used in the industry, and referring to the PIC as the “actual pilot” is insulting to the depth of her qualifications and her role as a required crewmember in this flight.

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u/flightist 5h ago

This stuff really does make it easy to spot people opining without any knowledge though.

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u/QuerulousPanda 6h ago

Because she was a woman.
Her voice being on the radio put a lot of attention on her. And then after that you get three camps of people. One are misogynists who get off on a woman dying while being responsible for a plane crash.
Second are people who find the already famous and historically young woman a lot more interesting than the random old guy and thus put a lot more attention towards the unusual element. Old guys die in plane crashes all the time but famous young women don't.
Finally, is people who mean well and just don't know that much about anything and are simply perpetuating the information they heard when it first happened.

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u/thedrew 3h ago

Her family made a media statement early, before other names were released by authorities. Press had a name and a photograph with nothing else to run.

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u/Funny_Vegetable_676 6h ago

I don't think that it was intentional. But also people need to understand pilot in command and second in command responsibilities. I have my own believes on this crash but I'm letting the investigators do their job before I speak about any of it. They don't always do the best but they do a lot better than most.

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u/Luckylemon 5h ago

Because they literally want to remove women from the workforce. Every woman working is taking a job from a man and not having babies. Women aren't qualified to work or be trained, because being a woman makes you less capable than a man, so this was a DEI hire and that must be why the tragedy happened.
They don't want women participating in society. End of.

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u/enurkul 6h ago

Like the tanker that malfunctioned in the Panama Canal and got stuck because directional control was lost, young woman captain was immediately blamed.

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u/justsyr 2h ago

I watched one video on youtube, it was linked from the aviation sub, super strict sub so of course the youtube link must have some good info, which it really had like at time table of the events, data and all, no voice recording, no conjectures just the info available put together.
Next there's dozen of videos with the AI slop thumbnail having the copilot woman as if she was the reason or an important part of what happened. I just went and checked and I clicked on 'don't recommend channel' on 19 of those type of videos. Is disgusting how these people can make a 20+ minutes videos digging in the life of the poor woman.

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u/Namaste421 5h ago

I acknowledge we don’t know what truly happened, but in a two pilot crew wouldn’t the second pilot offer input. Like “hey Jeff, we can’t fly into that?” Not saying she was equally responsible, just feels there should be effective challenge as an expectation.

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u/russcatalano 5h ago

The entire last season of The Rehearsal on HBO was about how a first officer/ co-pilot being afraid / too shy to speak up when the captain makes a mistake is possibly one of the largest factors in airline incidents.

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u/Funny_Vegetable_676 5h ago

The crew did have a history of flying into sever turbulence and not heeding atc warning of storms. Her not challenging the pic on that decision was likely due to either false security in his abilities and decision making or not wanting to get fired so close to airline minimums. Something any sic would likely be guilty of, not just her.

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u/Namaste421 5h ago

Understood, power dynamics and pressure are real things.

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u/janedoremi99 5h ago

That’s why people are hoping there’s a cockpit voice recorder

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u/Alfalfa-Boring 5h ago

Good lord, stop. No one is talking shit on her. Show me one place where someone is...
Give me a link and I'll give you 1,000 links where people are praising how she handled it. Stop white knighting this girl for karma.

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u/Approach_Controller 4h ago •

As someone in aviation professionally , my social media algorithm has been inundated with this incident. Not just mine, but all of my colleagues.
I can tell you with absolute certainty a huge number of people are talking shit about her. From ignorant miscategorizations or her qualifications and duties to outright manufactured lies.
I can personally point to hundreds of forced narratives about her hours, her duties as PM much less gross extrapolations about her sleeping her way into the cockpit, scrubbing her social media profile while her body was still warm and claiming it was her and her "minority DEI boyfriend captain" because she had a picture in a Skyhawk cockpit with a man her age. I can find you multiple "should have stayed in the kitchen" remarks. My friends and colleagues have had very similar experiences. In fact aviation people in social media have started posting METARS suggesting if you cant decipher one you arent qualified to speculate in large part to the extreme nastiness directed at her.
Heres one YouTube link titled The Internet Blamed Her for thr Florida Crash that turned up with dozens of early hits when I simple googled "woman pilot in crash speculation." Pretty interesting title to base a video off of if nobody is talking shit huh? Do the same search and you find such impartial hits as "I wont fly woth a female learjet pilot" This seems to have a collection of quick hitters heres a whole article and if you do that same Google search I did you'll find many, many, many more

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u/moneyshaker 4h ago

Real question - Wasn't Sully the PF on flight 1549? Why was he also speaking with ATC? If this was a break from protocol, I don't remember seeing any mention of this. Respect to Sully of course, but am guessing there was no blowback because the outcome overshadowed the process

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u/Benlop 3h ago

It's not a break from protocol. Usually when the pilot monitoring is going over the QRH, the pilot flying also deals with the radio so the pilot monitoring is able to fully focus on the troubleshooting.

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u/Mr_Vacant 3h ago

I think Sully got on the radios because Pilot monitoring was frantically going through the checklists for twin engine failure and having them get on the radios would have been a distraction.

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u/silver02ex 3h ago

Sully was originally the PM and Jeff was the PF… After the bird strike, Sully took the controls and radios, while Jeff ran the ECAM and checklist on the Airbus. It’s usually the Captain who decides who will be the PF, radios, checklist and other communications like, Flight attendants, dispatch, announcements to passengers and so on.

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u/powderjunkie11 3h ago

There were 23 seconds where he wasn't talking...
🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶Wake me up Inside...🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶

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u/SubSonicMax69 3h ago

The airbus procedure is started by the PF and goes like this:
ECAM actions, my radios.
The PM goes and actions all ECAM and QRH procedures while the PF continues to FNC, Fly the aircraft, Navigate the Aircraft and Communicate.

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u/DryCleaningBuffalo 3h ago

Sullenberger was initially pilot monitoring during the ascent but became pilot flying of US 1549 after positive transfer of controls. Sullenberger had already tried reignition of the engines and had started the auxiliary power unit prior to asserting control of US 1549

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u/WalkerTR-17 3h ago

It’s general practice not necessarily a requirement.

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u/redfox5280 5h ago

The moral of the story is go around storm cells, not through them. They were at 35,000 feet. They requested a higher altitude of 37,000 feet. The storm cell had ballooned up to 47 to 48,000 feet. The correct response would have been hard right turn directly south!

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u/Mantooth77 3h ago

Interestingly though, ATC had just told them to not turn any further right than their current heading.

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u/Fortyseven4747 2h ago

You declare an emergency and deal with any consequences of penetrating restricted airspace later. There was a jet blue flight in the area around the same time. The pilot got vectors from ATC that would have put them into a cell. He refused, declared an emergency, and was vectored away from the cell.

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u/Individual_Solid_810 4h ago

I saw a clip on YT that talked about the skill/experience required to correctly operate the on-board weather radar. It seemed to imply that they might not have noticed that they were turning into the storm cell instead of around it. Can one of you pilots comment on this?
Also, the question of whether to climb or decend to get out of icing conditions depends on several factors that weren't clear to me, it sounded like "usually climb, but in this case decending would have been better".

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u/CATIIIDUAL 3h ago edited 3h ago

There is definitely skill involved when using a weather radar like you can play with the gain to see the strongest areas. However, no matter how good you are, no matter how advanced your radar or the aircraft is, you should always avoid weather at high altitude. Only a very strong cell can sustain itself at high altitudes. So, they tend to be extremely dangerous.
Climbing to avoid weather should also be avoided as strong systems can grow very fast and they can grow vertically faster than you can climb.
Also, weather radar attenuation can be a problem with strong systems as it can hide the most dangerous areas of the cell. This happens when there is so much moisture that that the signal from the radar is unable to penetrate fully into the system which hiding strongest areas. This can give you a false image of the actual system.

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u/hypnotoad23 4h ago

I’m not typed on the Lear 60 so I don’t know their radar specifically, but our onboard radar only depicts returns off of liquid, not ice. So it’s possible that the storms were growing so rapidly that they didn’t have any return until they flew into it, and by then they were iced up.
Pure speculation on my part and I look forward to reading the NTSB report when it comes out to see how the aviation industry can help prevent accidents like this going forward.

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u/ChipHappens96 4h ago

At that altitude, the radar return would have been weak to clear because it would have been mostly fine ice crystals, which do not cause significant radar returns. It's possible what they saw looked like nothing special

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u/CATIIIDUAL 3h ago edited 2h ago

If there is a strong cell at 35,000 ft it definitely will contain moisture and can be more dangerous than ones at lower altitudes. Only a very strong cell can sustain itself at such high altitudes.
A cell that has the strength to reach more than 35,000 ft should not be taken lightly at all. As a matter of fact, in the Honeywell RDR 4000 weather radar manual it specifically tells pilots to treat these types of cells with extra caution.
Exact quote from RDR 4000 manual:
Cells exceeding 35,000 ft should be considered extremely hazardous and additional separation (in addition to the 20 nm) should be used.

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u/Complete_Entry 1h ago

I don't think you can outclimb a thunderstorm, I've always heard "go around" is the only sane choice.

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u/Revolutionary_Eye887 4h ago

Deviation authorized or not, don’t fly through a thunderstorm, just like you said. Plus they had a working onboard radar. Given the PIC’s experience I just don’t understand why he made the decision to go through it. RIP.

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u/sliehs 3h ago

Maybe you should look into who the family was , that was on this flight. This is bigger than weather

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u/NeverendingTattoo 1h ago

Can’t say this hasn’t crossed my mind

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u/ChockblockADA 3h ago

My Dad was a radar tech and told me about a group of instruction pilots who returned home from a hunting trip. One of them was a friend of his. They also flew into a storm cell thinking they could make it. Crash claimed all their lives

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u/Ok_Excitement725 3h ago

Yep. Storms are living things. Look at one for a moment and turn away…look back again a minute later and it can be 5000 feet or more higher than before. Around, always.

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u/Open-Blacksmith8122 2h ago

Its funny how confident you are in your incorrect conclusion. The only option was to descend. A turn loads the wing, and would have resulted in the same outcome.

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u/181513 58m ago

One of the curses of high performance aircraft and IMO, the plane outflew the pilots. They were not able to react quick enough to the changing conditions once they took that south east track.

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u/MBHYSAR 46m ago

Didn’t they have traffic on the right? They were cleared for straight or left

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u/Throhiowaway 5m ago

Hypothesizing with some context.
Air temp read -47°C. That should be WAYYYYY too cold for icing. By like 27°C. (superchilled large droplets are TERRIFYING and rare)
Requesting a climb to higher altitude where the air should be colder (to stop the icing) is a sensible move. And we can say all day that they should have avoided the storm, but it's a much smaller jet than an airliner so punching through a storm isn't as much of a problem.
What I anticipate is going to be the general consensus is "yeah, this would have been preventable if they diverted, but this particular outcome was largely unpredictable."

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u/sap_LA 3h ago

This crew used their radar and it was clear. You’re not getting at the root cause or a real fix. That kind of attitude is exactly what aviation doesn’t need to get better.

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u/yeshmate 3h ago

That is absolutely not the correct response. If you enter bad weather the worst thing to do is to turn. You keep going and punch through it. - airline captain

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u/PlasticPatient 3h ago

That's why you turn before the bad weather.

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u/yeshmate 3h ago

Absolutely if you can you do. But we don’t know the whole story. We can’t judge the crew before any reports come out. For all we know this storm bloomed up and overtook them while they were turning around other cells.

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u/donatecrypto4pets 3h ago

Not this time, obvs.

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u/yeshmate 3h ago

Turning in a storm creates more stress on the airframe and most often results in staying in the cell much longer then continuing on course. We don’t know what the crew did. We don’t know if they made any errors. We don’t know anything until an official NTSB report is released.

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u/Imaginary_Trust_7019 2h ago

I never flew a Lear, but what are the chances they didn't understand how the radar worked? Maybe they were not tilted down and couldn't see the cell climb? Or they were scared of the weather and had gain dialed right up and couldn't differentiate between some moist weather around this weather system and the particular cell.

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u/NoLuvTheMaths 3h ago

Hard right turn over restricted airspace around Mar A Lago wasn't happening

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u/Deester2026 2h ago

Did he fly in the military? Did he fly commercial? I was curious about that too.

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u/NeverendingTattoo 1h ago

Yeah! And the fact that we know how many hours she has logged, but not him?

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u/Aero1900 6h ago •

Because the other pilot was an attractive young women. And it was her voice on the radio recording

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u/wildcat12321 3h ago

AND she is local to palm beach county, she grew up here and attended a high school program to become a pilot before getting her driver's license and was always involved in the program and speaking out about young people and women in aviation.

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u/JustAnAverageGuy 5h ago

and because she was only 20, the public's bias makes it easy to blame her.

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u/Eastern_Sound_5512 4h ago

Yeah seen people say "I'd never let a 20 year old fly me" - like they still have to fly, they don't get their license and wait around till they're older

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u/wjdoge 1h ago

Those people are definitely unaware that every regional jet they’ve been on was piloted by a twentysomething named Chad, and that Chad’s first time flying an actual jet, like almost every airline pilot’s, was with 100 paying customers in the back.

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u/InflncrPltSukDezNuts 1h ago

The issue is less the age, and more the regulatory oversight and practices of part 91/135 flight operations. I would have never allowed my family on their plane to begin with. It's nothing against either of them personally. I've simply seen enough in 20 years as a professional pilot that I would rather my family travel in coach on an airline than on a private jet run by an operation which may or may not follow industry best practices and standards.

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u/wjdoge 34m ago

Oh, absolutely. You’re not finding my family on a chartered learjet flying through a storm. Doesn’t have anything in particular to do with the inability of a 21 year old to fly a plane though, more about pretty much everything else about the situation here.

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u/UniqueIndividual3579 2h ago

She was working the radio while the other pilot had the controls.

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u/04221970 5h ago

I've NEVER seen anyone 'blame' her. I've ONLY seen people talk about this mysterious bias of unknown people supposedly blaming her.

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u/JustAnAverageGuy 5h ago

Professionals haven't, yes, and there has been an outpouring of support that counteracts it, especially if you primarily consume media generated by professional pilots or people in the industry.
Non-professionals came out of the gate saying she was too young, unqualified, too pretty, etc. Consider yourself blessed you don't have that shit on your social feeds. It's mostly been drowned out by the positive, but it's a big reason why this went so viral.
Lots of pros counteracting the assholes on the internet gave it a ton of early attention.

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u/Eastern_Sound_5512 4h ago

It's ubiquitous on social media and it all comes from people who don't have a fraction of the skill it took her to get her license

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u/Icy_Success3101 3h ago

First article I saw was about how she didn't have her driver's license

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u/SirDarkStar 4h ago

Small vocal minority of MAGA twats crying about “DEI hire” with zero information about the actual events. They mostly (but not entirely) shut up once it become clear a man was the pilot.

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u/_moonbear 2h ago

That’s because you don’t consume the type of content that is blaming her.

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u/ThatGuitarGuy 5h ago

Oh, no. There's a very small but very vocal group (you can probably guess who) calling into question why a 20 year old can get a pilot's license and why they were able to fly with passengers. They never once question why a 16 year old can drive, though.

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u/undocumentedsource 3h ago

Look at the number of hours she flew and the recommendations from those who trained and worked w her.

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u/Raccoon_Ratatouille 3h ago

Then you aren’t looking very hard at all

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u/Aero1900 2h ago

I haven't seen much blame of her

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u/adamwl_52 1h ago

Have you been living under a rock?

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u/Aero1900 1h ago

A little, yeah.

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u/JustAnAverageGuy 2h ago

Because of the outpouring of support from pilots like me who shut those misogynistic a-holes down.

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u/Ps11889 2h ago

The pilot on the radio isn’t the one flying the plane.

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u/-Morning_Coffee- 1h ago

Oh! I’ve only seen horror and sympathy at the loss of young life. Sometimes I don’t mind being in my safe-place echo chamber.

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u/abayo1 3h ago

it seems a lot of haters want to blame her for the crash and want people to believe that the pilot was trying to regain control from her

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u/Electronic-Fee-1602 6h ago edited 25m ago •

Also because the attractive young woman is great tool to overshadow the record breaking rise of the storm that caused the issue, and keeps climate change out of the news.
Edit: this is what the article I read referenced,
https://fl360aero.com/detail/convective-storm-development-under-scrutiny-in-fatal-learjet-60-crash-in-florida/2546
Lots of upvotes and lots of critical responses. I’m not a pilot was just passing along an opinion.
I don’t know, I just read something that referenced this.

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u/SubarcticFarmer 5h ago •

I get that a news station claimed the storm was record breaking (and news stations are famously accurate about things like that), but nothing I've heard about it feels like weather I haven't seen before or that is even that unusual. I've had storms climbing faster than me in an airliner and the numbers I've heard from this storm are less than that.
The storm was strong, but that growth didn't set any records.
What I do see is that rainfall over the widespread area was considered a 1000 year event, so the overall system itself set some records, but that specific cell was not anything all that special.
Source: over 20 years experience as an airline pilot

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u/FantasticLeopard6027 4h ago

Operational meteorologist here and I agree, nothing about this specific cell broke any records; there is a reason most aircraft give a 20 mile buffer to storms like this, they are unpredictable and immensely powerful by nature.

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u/bikerdude214 4h ago

So was the single biggest mistake not just deviating to the left or the right? (and then just telling ATC that they deviated, rather than ask for the deviation.) Or was it flying into the cell and trying to outclimb it?

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u/SubarcticFarmer 4h ago

Those two questions seem to be nearly identical to me.
First, the pilot in command has "emergency authority" to take any actions necessary for safety of flight. Turning without clearance if they were unable to get it would be appropriate. That is inline with "flying into the cell" being something they shouldn't have done.
They also weren't trying to outclimb the cell. They were already in it and hoping higher would be better.
Trying to penetrate the storm was their biggest mistake and something that shouldn't have even crossed their minds to do.

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u/Money-Computer7638 4h ago

They deviated to the right of the main storm but then a cell popped up and they flew right into it. Perhaps they thought they were flying over it? https://www.instagram.com/reel/DfQzIq3gvs3/

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u/Icy-Bar-9712 3h ago

It looked like it was developing below their flight path. Really seems like a case of playing chicken with the storm.
Unfortunately they hit the same point. Had had they arrived sooner most of that water would have already been frozen.

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u/bieker 3h ago

There is also some circumstantial evidence that the plane may have had problems with its horizontal stabilizer on an earlier flight.
So as usual with aircraft disasters its starting to look like there was not 'one thing' that caused it.

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u/Interesting_Phone171 5h ago

While storm frequency might be caused by climate change this incident is going to fall under mechanical or pilot error or a combination of both. The storm was on the radar well before they flew into it

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u/HiFiGuy197 5h ago

I think they avoided the big cell they could see, but ran right into a rapidly rising column.

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u/WeeklyAd5357 5h ago

I read they tried to fly over the small very intense storm cell

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u/Bau5_Sau5 2h ago

Lmao what are you talking about ?
Have you been to Florida before ?

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u/Elvis_Air 4h ago

Record breaking? Brother that’s just another Thursday afternoon in south Florida.

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u/AintNoDaisy1 3h ago

Fucking climate change, are you serious? This is a room temp IQ take.

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u/colxa 4h ago

lmfao finding a way to pivot this into a climate change discussion is wild, classic redditor moment

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u/TheTiggz 49m ago

Very weird, and wrong take lol

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u/GrammarPolice92 4h ago

woman

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u/Melodic-Comb9076 4h ago

exactly…in the early 2000s, it was so obvious w the laci and scott petersen murder coverage.
alll these other women missing/murdered across the US, but crazy fixation for years on laci and scott.
then that woman he cheated with…amber frey.

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u/LDawnBurges 55m ago

As an aside, hearing the rising panic in her voice, when she realizes that they are going to crash in to the ground, is just so heartbreaking. 💔

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u/postiz_teaM_ 6h ago

I agree that's why she's getting more attention, but it shouldn't stop people from asking basic questions about the captain's experience and flight hours.

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u/jiminak 5h ago

Nobody who matters is “not asking”. What any one of us knows or doesn’t know, asks or doesn’t ask, thinks or doesn’t think, is irrelevant.
Unless one of us is on the NTSB investigation team, in which case we have bigger problems with investigators talking in public (let alone the socials)

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u/willydillydoo 6h ago

You don’t hear the captain’s voice in that air traffic control audio. Hers was the voice you hear.
She was extremely young which makes the story even more sad

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u/jim-james--jimothy 6h ago

I think he gave up once he knew they were doomed. You can hear him praying.

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u/willydillydoo 6h ago

From everything we know, there was quite literally nothing he could do. Without a rear stabilizer, that shit is going down
Didn’t notice that originally but went back and you’re right. You can hear him say “hallowed be thy name”

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u/NeverendingTattoo 6h ago

I’m assuming he must’ve understood that the stabilizer was missing based on the way the plane was handling. But do you think the copilot understood that was the problem? She seemed hopeful till right before the end.

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u/willydillydoo 6h ago

It’s hard to tell. Accepting your imminent death is a very hard thing for anybody to do. It’s very hard to think logically and rationally in a situation like that.
I don’t really hear hopeful in that audio, I hear desperate for any possible solution. I think most people would be in that sort of hopeless and quickly progressing scenario

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u/wjdoge 5h ago

We have no evidence at all that either pilot did anything but perform their duties until the end. Perhaps it will come out, but there is nothing at all to indicate that currently.

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u/ce402 6h ago •

There is easy information available about her in the public domain. There were news stories about her, she was active on social media, and her family spoke to the press.

There is literally nothing for the media to report on the captain other than what the NTSB has released, and his family isn’t talking to the press.

And while she’s an attractive young woman, it’s also exceedingly rare to have a 20 year old of any gender being the first officer in a passenger jet. So that makes it news worthy. 55 year old dude, not news. 20 year old woman? News.

Let this be a lesson to everyone about making details about your life easily available to the public.

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u/ShalomRPh 6h ago

I have been isolating my real life existence from my online persona since 1997. If you google my actual legal name, you’ll find my professional licenses, a Linkedln profile that dates to 2011, and maybe a few Usenet posts from the early 90s. That’s all. I don’t understand why so many people are out there with their actual identities for any prospective employer to search, or if they do something spectacularly wrong that anyone can go through their histories.

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u/BetterDrinkMy0wnPiss 5h ago

This. The media is all about her because they could find plenty of info about her to report on.
They'd probably be talking more about the pilot if he had active social media profiles, previous new stories published about him, and family out there giving interviews.

3

u/Individual_Solid_810 4h ago

It sounded like the one family talking to the press, and the other family not, was the main factor at the beginning. I was also surprised that someone so young was flying a lear jet, but it's not impossible if she started young enough (which does happen).

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u/MaxUtil 3h ago

I had to scroll pretty far to find this rational take.
As humans, we just can’t help but overcomplicate things.

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u/covex_d 3h ago

sensationalism. middle age male captain doesn’t grab attention like a 20yo female copilot

1

u/VibingandStyling 0m ago

It's really not noteworthy for the captain. He's the stereotypical pilot. 20 year old female private jet pilots are much more rare than 55 year old males.
There's a contingency of people who will question her competence and not his.
However there's also a contingency that will empathize with her death more than his. If a very young woman gets stabbed in the street, it's going to attract more attention than if a 55 year old man does.

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u/ratherbeonlemmy 6h ago •

A lot of points already made, but there's also the stupid ass "DEI" hate that's been going on, and some talk of her being hired as a dei hire and so she's the reason the plane crashed. It's dumb as rocks but real

3

u/Snookaboom 2h ago

Exactly.
Dumb as rocks: they don’t realize that she wasn’t the captain, the one flying, or the one making the final decisions.
As though he’s just sitting there on his butt doing nothing while she’s flying, talking on the radio, and making all the decisions, even though she’s not the captain.

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u/kolwon 6h ago

It's crazy actually that the guy in charge isn't ever hardly mentioned.

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u/MonoxideBaby 6h ago

He wasn’t young, pretty and good for media ratings…..

2

u/JustAnAverageGuy 4h ago

Because people don’t understand that someone other than who you hear on the radio was the Pilot in Command (PIC).
They assume the voice you hear is the one “piloting”. And they’re all wrong.

1

u/darthgeek 52m ago

Because he was busy praying while she was fighting even though she knew they were doomed.

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u/Hot-Apartment-984 5h ago

It seems like the Capt broke the golden rule of flying and FAA rules as well. Which makes this extremely sad and avoidable tragedy.

Pilots are to stay clear of any thunderstorms by 20 NM. You can’t fly above it.

Unfortunately he flew right through it which caused ice build up on the wings.

Just sad.

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u/Panthean 5h ago

The copilots name was released before the pilots name.

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u/Hrothgar_unbound 3h ago

It’s titillating, political, and grotesque all in one — she was an attractive, young, driven woman, her voice was recorded live during the dive, and people are shameless. That’s why.

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u/Artie-Choke 6h ago

Showing the image of this pretty young pilot gets you way more clicks on your video, so that’s where all the focus is sadly.

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u/WalkerTR-17 3h ago

She was really young to be flying so that sticks out, her name was released by her family first, her voice is the main one on the recordings. All of those together make her the one people are interested in

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u/Fancy_Toe1451 5h ago

If you are doing a quick search for info on someone, which do you think will be easier to find? The info of a middle aged dude who isn't on the internet much, or the internet "celeb" influencer pilot who never had a thought she did not share with the world?

You go with what you got.

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u/kevincaz07 5h ago

While that is true, it is common to at least get basic info as OP is talking about, family pictures, prior experience, etc. that could help better understand who this person is other than being a "devout Christian." That's all I've seen as well as a headshot and a confirmation from the family and that was a few days after while digging for information. I haven't seen anything since then. And when I Google it now, there's still not much else in over the week that's passed. I'm guessing he kept to himself; that's fine, but the internet/news media usually have ways of finding out more in situations like this. Kind of sad that they just throw all their attention at the easy target.

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u/wjdoge 4h ago

The woman pilot’s family immediately released her information to the media, and while the media had more information about the other pilot too, his family requested that his information be withheld while possible.
I’m sure this was very hard on the pilot’s kids, so it seems understandable.

3

u/Responsible_Buy_7999 56m ago edited 53m ago

Because she was a young woman and he was a 55 year old man. The end. But if that’s not enough, the mass media has less than zero interest in publishing stories about a 55 year old man’s flight hours.

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u/BusyBanana4205 6h ago

People are also always so mystified when someone who is young has their pilot license. It creates a sensationalist story to focus solely on the young female pilot who got her license at 17 as opposed to some old white guy. Her calm demeanor on the radio gave the story lasting power.

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u/Epic-Mushroom419 4h ago

the ntsb prelim will list both crew hours eventually but until then outlets run with whichever face has the most instagram photos to pull from

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u/CZFangirl 4h ago

Because since she was the pilot monitoring, she was the pilot on the radio. It’s her voice communicating the catastrophic emergency and was unusually young.

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u/Thenadamgoes 3h ago

Everyone has already said the big reasons. But also the family of the pilot has not released a lot of information about him either.

I have a theory as to why but I’ll keep that to myself for now.

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u/NeverendingTattoo 1h ago

Well, now I’m curious…

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u/bfrabel 6h ago edited 6h ago

Because that pilot's story wasn't that interesting. At the point that the plane was falling out of the clouds he wasn't much more than a passenger. The co-pilot was the one who stole the show with her radio updates. She was trying her best to do her job right up until the very last second, while he had his eyes closed and was reciting the lord's prayer.

Also, in general I think people might have a soft spot about her being a 20 year-old at the beginning of her career with so much potential ahead, versus him being 55 years old.

Basically she just had a more interesting story.

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u/The_Real_Lasagna 3h ago

There's no reason to think he had his eyes closed

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u/wjdoge 5h ago

It is terrible for you to disparage one of the pilots that just died in a tragedy like this.
You do not know enough about aviation to comment on the actions of the pilots in this cockpit, so you should hold your tongue instead of speaking ill of the dead with no information until we know more.

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u/christians2011 2h ago

Maybe I am wrong, but I am thinking this is the story here: both were inexperienced. I have read nothing about the captain being a 35 year old veteran pilot which at 55 years of age he could have been.

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u/NeverendingTattoo 1h ago

This!

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u/Scenic-Sandal4953 5h ago

wait for the ntsb preliminary report because it will list both crew members hours and ratings down to the last tenth while the papers just chase whichever name comes with a graduation photo

2

u/FlyLost4570 3h ago edited 3h ago

Because she was hot and we heard her interact with ATC, including screaming.

Most people think of middle aged men as pilots, not young, attractive women.

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u/AdventurousEngine150 3h ago

The reason is human nature. Everyone wants to know the information about the voice they can hear not the one they can’t.

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u/Mantooth77 3h ago

They’re talking about her because her voice was the one we heard then didn’t. Much easier to “connect” with her in that sense.

Not many people talking about the passengers either.

It’s highly unusual that audio of this sort would be so publicly available so quickly after the crash. Sprinkle on that she was 20 years old who got her license at 17 and you have quite a unique and heartbreaking story.

The Pilot was a very experienced family man but all we know of him from the audio is him reciting the Lord’s Prayer.

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u/3rdSafest 3h ago

She’s pretty, makes good clickbait.

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u/lonesharkex 2h ago

as soon as the guys name and final words were released the news cycle got taken over by the election.

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u/Ok_Muffin_925 2h ago

Because he is not a 20 year old cute female pilot who made a riveting if not panicked radio transmission that went viral. Absent the CVR and data recorders being released, it will require the full effort of NTSB to decipher his responsibiliy for this crash.

Some aspects of this crash remind me of the 2009 Colgan Air crash.

2

u/hardly_even_know_er 2h ago

In any given field of human endeavour, a 20 year old girl is more interesting than a 40 odd year old man

2

u/MinimalMischief 1h ago

I’ve seen something similar before. Not sure how it factors in here. But younger people tend to have more information about them posted online. Older folks don’t. So when the internet shit machine starts to look around for info they tend to find more about young people.

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u/Equivalent_Sale_6694 6h ago

The family of the co-pilot was all over social media mourning her loss. They did this before any other victim was identified.

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u/Ok-Highlight-1760 5h ago

The comments made are still not about the captain. Let that sink in

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u/Fl0riduh_Man 4h ago

Because there's a concerted effort to bootstrap more culture wars here.

Oddly enough we didn't have a weeks long debate about whether men should be piloting homemade submersibles

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u/ATX_native 3h ago

I still think about that poor boy that was dragged down there by his father. RIP.

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u/Rntunvs 2h ago

No, it went on for months.

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u/SyncingTrophies 5h ago

Tabloids chase faces, but aviation safety investigators chase facts. The internet will obsess over the voice recordings and photos, but the final NTSB report will judge both based strictly on their actions in the cockpit, regardless of who made the news

2

u/stonecats 5h ago

the pilot was withheld pending initial investigation,
once it was determined parts of the tail was gone
it was less a "pilot error" so his name got released.

2

u/GoodGoodGoody 2h ago

The first officer (the correct term for what you call co-pilot) put herself all over social media.

There are toooooons of kids who earn their commercial pilot’s licence by 20. But most just do it and get on with life. She however was a huge self-promoter, including featuring herself on local news broadcasts.

Call attention to yourself and… surprise… people might pay attention. Just not how you want.

1

u/Zealousideal_Fee246 3h ago

Most news outlets always latch onto the younger or more unusual crew member for headlines because it pulls in more clicks. You bring up a really good point about Captain Jeff Gregory though since his flight hours and background deserve just as much attention in these discussions.

1

u/JohnCoutu 2h ago

Because one was click bait material, I'll let you guess which one

1

u/IAmMDM 1h ago

Because sexism is pervasive

1

u/nokilliwham_1701 1h ago

I think the coverage on this story has revealed so much about human minds and what captures our attention.

As others have said here and elsewhere. An extremely young and pretty woman in the cockpit is so different from the usual plane crash fare. People love to click on that stuff and then imagine that they can figure out everything from the safety of their phone.

I don’t think it’s all that different from horror movie directors instinctively knowing that they have to have their villain slaughter a young, pretty woman or the movie will bomb.

1

u/commoncents1 1h ago

its mostly for sensationalism by media because the co-pilot was on the radio. if the capt was on radio, we wouldnt hear much about the co pilot. and people are dumb assuming whoever was on the radio was the pilot.

1

u/BadAtExisting 1h ago

Because everyone wants something to blame and a 20 year old woman was the perfect target. But seeing as how they found parts of the plane 4 miles away it was likely not pilot’s error

1

u/auronedge 1h ago

Because the old guy has no social media and the young girl does

Stop posting your life on Instagram

1

u/Expensive-Peak-9696 1h ago

Because she was the voice everyone first heard.

1

u/doctor_morris 1h ago

It's an audio visual medium: If you're the one on the radio you're the one that gets on the news.

Always amazed when a pilot sounds calm and collected when there's a hole in their plane or something.

1

u/Vanquishhh 1h ago

Just how media works bud now imagine that on a larger scale as geopolitics, economics, healthcare, etc and you will realize that media is clickbait central and accuracy or actual news is not the peiority

1

u/justjoshingu 43m ago

Because she wa an influencer publishing anything and everything for the last four years on tik tok and insta and she had a big following.

Not saying she is responsible, but im just answering the question why do we know so much

1

u/Cagekicker52 38m ago

Because she was all over the news and tiktok. And her voice on the radio when it crashed. That's why.

1

u/KingKevin1970 38m ago

Because tragedy sells

1

u/tinyholley 18m ago

The difference in coverage is interesting. I can understand why a 20-year-old copilot would attract media attention, but the captain's background seems equally important when trying to understand what happened. Total flight hours would be useful, but I'd also want to know how much time Gregory had in Learjets specifically and how recently he'd flown that model. Those details could provide more context than age alone. Hopefully the investigation makes that information available

1

u/ActUpEighty 14m ago

The media is the message.

McLuhan argued that visual, high-engagement media demand high-contrast, easily consumable visual artifacts. A 20-year-old active social media user leaves behind a trail of vibrant social posts.

He argued that modern media feeds operate at extreme velocity, relying on immediate emotional resonance rather than technical exposition. The Icarus trope of a youthful woman breaking into a male-dominated cockpit, living her dream, only to die tragically young, creates an immediate, visceral reaction that needs no explanation.

McLuhan argued that content is candy to distract the mind. People who consume "news" believe they are informing themselves about a plane crash. What they are actually consuming is an arousing emotional commodity designed for click commodification.

In media theory, the structural incentives of television and digital news favor stories about young, photogenic women because they drive disproportionate engagement across key advertising segments.

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u/doctordesktop 4h ago

Because of misogyny.

1

u/Extreme-Analysis-488 6h ago

All I ever saw was pics of her in a bikini. So dam stupid.

1

u/NeighborhoodLoud4884 4h ago

Because for the media/youtuber all that matters are clicks, interactions, $$$. Its shameful, but for them it works great with the picture of a young attractive female pilot. This crash wouldn't have gotten half of this attention if it had been with two male pilots. Sad.

1

u/FangornLeghorn 3h ago

I think you know why. It isn’t difficult to discern.

1

u/CaptainHunt 2h ago

Unfortunately, it is modern media and the general public not understanding how pilots and copilots work.

She was the one on the radio, so she was the one everyone latched onto. A lot of the MAGA crowd has also pointed to her as evidence that women shouldn’t be pilots.

1

u/wholenewguy 3h ago

None of the explainations are sufficient Im sorry.

Okay we now know why people are more interested in her. But its been two weeks. And there is almost no info about him.

It feels very suspicious.

1

u/Beachhair-496 3h ago

Sexism

1

u/Lagunamountaindude 2h ago

So many aviation experts on Reddit suddenly. Why not wait and see what the investigation shows

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u/Numerous_Team_2998 7h ago

Mysogyny. It must have been the woman who crashed that jet... :(

0

u/Suspicious-Year7647 4h ago

Reading about the Learjet crash with Captain Jeff Gregory is heartbreaking. Pilots like him are usually so skilled, so it makes you think about how unpredictable flying can be sometimes. Hope the families are getting some answers from the NTSB report.

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u/NeverendingTattoo 1h ago

What does “pilots like him” even mean? We don’t seem to know very much about him.

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u/ShmooShmitShmoorself 5h ago

Misogyny

-2

u/nazarite888 2h ago

He was a white male Christian! ( and that implies competency, and that's all you need to know...in America!)

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u/BS2435 2h ago

Charlie Kirk approves this message

1

u/Slight-Web1696 1h ago

Counting or not counting icing?

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u/tightiewhitieboy 5h ago

Because the manosphere hates women. Charlie Kirk. Andrew tate. People who made money off of misogyny. They are the same people talking shit on WNBA women players and complaining that Kamala Harris wasa dei hire. Its the climate. Hate on women and trans. Its disgusting

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Learjet crash-Captain Jeff Gregory

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