What Happened to the Learjet 60 in Florida? - Dr. Shem Malmquist - #70

Shem Malmquist is a veteran airline captain, accident investigator and system safety researcher based in Florida, with about 45 years of flying for airlines. He has flown mostly very large aircraft all over the world, including as a Boeing 777 captain, while also working on accident and safety investigations and aircraft certification. He holds a PhD focused on systems safety engineering and system-theoretic methods for understanding accidents, as well as a master's in human factors, and has taught at the Florida Institute of Technology's College of Aeronautics. In this emergency episode, recorded the day after a Learjet 60 crashed in Greenacres, Florida, killing all nine people on board, he explains what is and isn't known so far, from the reported icing and turbulence to the NTSB's early evidence of a breakup before impact. He co-authored the seventh edition of Commercial Aviation Safety, Angle of Attack about Air France 447, and the 2025 book Simulation Training: Processes, Challenges and Solutions. Expect to learn what we know and don't know about the Learjet 60 crash, whether ice is dangerous at cruise altitude, why business jets fly higher than airliners, why air traffic control asks planes to descend, who decides whether it is safe to fly into weather, how air traffic control radar differs from cockpit weather radar, how severe a storm must be to threaten an airplane, whether a dive can rip parts off a plane, why pilots sometimes have to push rather than pull in a dive, whether a Learjet carries a cockpit voice recorder, how charter flights differ from airlines and whether investigators will ever find out what happened. Shem Malmquist online: Website: https://malmquistsafety.com Blog: https://airlinesafety.blog LinkedIn: Shem Malmquist Book: Simulation Training: Processes, Challenges and Solutions (CRC Press, 2025) 0:00 Introduction 0:49 Shem's career in aviation safety 5:26 First thoughts on the crash 6:50 What we know so far 8:23 Ice at cruise altitude 10:02 Why business jets fly higher 11:09 The Flightradar24 data 12:38 Why ATC asked them to descend 15:19 The irregular speed data 16:33 Who decides if flying is safe 20:14 ATC radar versus cockpit radar 23:03 How dangerous are storms 25:48 Breakup before impact 28:39 Why pilots push in a dive 30:26 Did the Learjet carry a recorder 31:06 Charter flights versus airlines 32:53 The Hop-A-Jet flight attendant 34:07 What the NTSB will look for 36:30 Voice and flight data recorders 38:07 What the pilots may have seen 41:03 The weather radar training gap 43:55 Will we ever get answers 45:15 Turning crashes into safety lessons 46:24 Where to find Shem's work