Allan Filguieras’ daughter, Nathalia Filgueiras, was his soulmate.
They spent their happiest moments together in the sky, flying together in his small plane. While she began flying alongside him at age 12, she quickly became a skilled pilot in her own right, earning a private license her senior year of high school.
Now, Allan Filgueiras says he just wishes he was there when that passion led to tragedy.
Nathalia Filgueiras, a West Boca High School graduate, was the co-pilot of a business jet that crashed in Palm Beach County on Sunday. All nine people on board were killed, including seven passengers and two crew members. Nathalia Filgueiras was the flight’s co-pilot and can be heard on harrowing audio transmissions from their final moments. She was just 20 years old.
Allan Filgueiras spoke publicly about his daughter’s death for the first time at a Friday news conference in Coral Gables.
“She was gifted, and my soulmate,” Allan Filguieras said through tears on Friday, as photos of his daughter smiling from a cockpit filled the space behind him. “I wanted to be by her side, inside the plane, to help … I had to be next to her.”
As the National Transportation Safety Board investigates what weather, mechanical or tactical factors caused the crash, family members and former mentors are remembering the young pilot as passionate and talented beyond her 20 years.
“She was at the top of her class in everything that she did, and she was perfectly qualified to be the co-pilot on this flight, despite her tender years,” said personal injury attorney Stuart Grossman, whose firm, Grossman, Yaffa and Cohen, was retained by the young pilot’s family. Grossman said at the news conference there were no immediate plans to file a lawsuit over the crash.
Filgueiras had accumulated about 1,300 hours of flight experience up until her death. She earned certifications as a private pilot, commercial pilot and instrument pilot, and she served also as a flight instructor.
Designated pilot examiner Daniel Petrovich still remembers what he told Filgueiras after he finished her check ride, the final test in her pilot training, in 2023.
“I looked at her,” Petrovich told the South Florida Sun Sentinel. “And I said, ‘I would let you fly me anywhere.’”
Just 17 years old at the time, Filgueiras didn’t miss a question on her oral exam, Petrovich said. Her flight planning was flawless. When she called the ground control at the tower, clearing her entrance to the runway, the controller commented on her professionalism.
Petrovich kept up with Filgueiras on social media and through friends. He learned of her death in a phone call.
The pilot of 49 years still remembers how Filgueiras flew at a commercial level before even earning her private license — leaving him “thoroughly, thoroughly impressed.”
“It gives me hope for the future, to see people like that,” Petrovich said. “It’s wonderful, but it’s sad at the same time. I think we lost a bright, shining star in the aviation world.”
Investigators earlier this week found the jet’s left tail elevator up to 3.8 miles away from the site of impact, indicating the aircraft began breaking apart before impact. The elevator controls the up and down pitch of the plane.
Teams are still working to recover more evidence, despite initial delays from storms that filled the crater left by the impact, and urging people to come forward if they find debris. Hundreds of residents in the area have been displaced with no timeline for return.
The jet crashed shortly before 1 p.m. on Sunday, minutes after Filgueiras calmly reported turbulence and icing on the plane’s wings. Shortly afterward, Filgueiras gave an urgent “mayday” call as the plane nose-dived at 20,000 feet per minute before exploding into a fireball. Storms were pummeling the region at the time, as they had been throughout the week.
On Friday, Grossman thanked the NTSB for sending nearly 20 investigators to the site and urged people to listen to their instructions.
“I think everyone should stay out of the government’s way and, for once in their lifetime, let law firms relax and just do the right thing,” he said.
Mike Lopez-Trigo, a Miami attorney not involved with the case, said investigators will probe maintenance logs to see what could have caused the plane to begin breaking apart in the air, along with other factors like weather conditions and pilot error.
Investigators will likely complete their initial findings within a month, he said. After that, it’ll be about a year before a full report comes out, at which point the surviving family members will determine next steps.
“Whether it be maintenance protocols or requirements for the planes, or how they’re maintained … whether or not there was pilot error,” Lopez-Trigo said. “Whatever questions are ultimately answered, it’ll be the decision of the survivors of these families on what kind of action they want to take.”
Chris Kirk trained Filgueiras from her early days learning to fly after connecting with her father. The veteran pilot describes her as one of the most naturally gifted he’s taught, but he also remembers her for her bright personality. She showed kindness to everyone, even befriending the man who worked on the airplanes at her flight school, he told the Sun Sentinel.
Kirk himself administered some of her flight checks and even a memorable spin endorsement — where her enthusiasm left him sick with dizziness.
“OK, all right, enough,” he remembers telling her. Filguieras just called him a “sissy.”
Every time she passed another test, he was sent a picture: Filgueiras, smiling, holding up her newest certificate.
“Whether she was going to go on to the airlines or whether she would have stayed in the 135 operator, who knows where she was heading, what her desire was,” Kirk said. “But for her, you know, the world was her oyster. She could have done anything.”
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