The 20-year-old co-pilot aboard the Learjet that crashed in Florida last weekend is being remembered by her former flight instructor as “naturally gifted.”
Nathalia Gadelha Filgueiras earned her pilot’s license while she was still in high school before she even had a driver’s license. Flight instructor Chris Kirk posted about his former student on Facebook in the wake of the tragedy, calling Filgueiras a real talent in the cockpit.
“She was without a doubt the most naturally gifted pilot I have ever taught, and I have been teaching for 40 years!!” he wrote on Wednesday. “That young lady was born to fly! There was not a check ride that the examiner was not blown away!”
“I am saddened, because so many of the pilots in training today never wanted to become pilots and only want to become airline pilots … as I did check rides, I saw this time and time again,” Kirk continued. “They had no passion for flying. They only wanted to get to the airlines to make the big money … Nathalia was PASSIONATE about flying!!! She was a [100%] natural born pilot.”
The flight instructor concluded, saying he prays Filgueiras “continues to fly amongst the clouds in heaven.”
Filgueiras can be heard on the heartbreaking audio recording from the doomed flight updating air traffic control on their speed and altitude before declaring they were about to “crash into the ground” and were “out of time.” Just after she said that, the jet crashed on a street and exploded, killing all nine people onboard.
Filgueiras’s mother Camila told The New York Post that her daughter had been working as a pilot for nine months when the crash occurred.
“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,” she told the outlet. “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.”
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