Aviation attorney and pilot says icing conditions likely led to the Learjet crash that killed 9
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An aviation expert says ice may have brought down a Learjet that crashed on Nov. 1, killing all nine people on board.News4JAX spoke one-on-one with Edward Booth, a board-certified aviation attorney and airline transport-rated pilot with 49 years of aviation experience. Booth said he instantly looked at weather conditions after hearing about the crash.“I immediately looked at the weather prevailing at the time and thought initially that it must’ve been caused by some weather phenomena that the aircraft encountered,” Booth said. “When I heard that they were reporting clear icing, visible precipitation and an outside temp of minus 50 Fahrenheit, I think it becomes clear that this was a situation where the tail of the airplane became contaminated by ice and rendered it uncontrollable.”How ice can bring down a planeBooth explained that each aircraft has a maximum airspeed based on its structural limits. When ice builds up on the tail of a plane, it can cause the tail to become inoperative o