Apparently, it was a missile, the government was involved, and the lack of easily recognisable aircraft parts on the ground proves something sinister happened.

Then came the YouTubers comparing the wreckage to the September 11 attack on the Pentagon and the lack of visible aircraft parts, as though putting two crash videos beside each other amounts to an investigation.

These are the kinds of statements I’ve been reading on social media following the Learjet crash in Florida, and the confidence behind them is extraordinary.

Fly-by-night conspiracy theorists have been announcing their conclusions while investigators are still recovering evidence.

People who appear to have little understanding of aviation are presenting themselves as authorities on aircraft structures, impact damage and the circumstances of the crash.

I’ve been around aviation my entire life, and watching this nonsense circulate is infuriating. Someone sees footage they don’t understand, decides the wreckage looks wrong and immeditely starts suggesting a government opration.

The Pentagon comparisons are particularly tiresome. Comparing the appearance of two crash sites cannot establish what happened at either one without examining the aircraft, impact conditions, structures and physical evidence.

Yet these videos invite viewers to treat their own unfamiliarity with aircraft accidents as proof that something has been concealed.

What makes this behaviour so callous is that real people died. They had families and futures, including a 20-year-old pilot whose aviation career had barely begun.

Imagine losing someone you love, then opening social media to find strangers using their final moments to promote an unsupported missile theory.

The aircraft was a Learjet 60, registered N722BD, flying from Austin towards the Bahamas. Flight tracking information and cockpit transmissions document a weather encounter followed by a catastrophic descent near West Palm Beach on 1 November.

The crew reported icing, turbulence and precipitation before reporting an overspeed condition during the descent.

There is meaningful information to examine, but apparently that requires more effort than typing “government cover-up” beneath a video.

My own assessment, based on the information available, is that this looks like poor navigation and possible pilot error during a dangerous weather encounter. That remains my interpretation, subject to the investigation establishing what happened.

The sequence I consider plausible is that icing contributed to an aerodynamic stall and loss of control, followed by a rapidly accelerating descent and structural damage.

Ice forming on the wings, including around their leading edges, can disrupt airflow, reduce lift and increase stall speed. The FAA describes these effects in its guidance on airframe icing.

If sufficient ice accumulated on this aircraft, it could have contributed to a stall and the subsequent nose-down descent.

Investigators will need to establish whether that occurred, how the ice protection systems were operating and what other factors affected the aircraft.

At the reported altitude, temperatures around minus 40 degrees Celsius are conceivable, although altitude alone cannot establish the actual outside air temperature.

Extreme cold also needs to be understood properly: conventional airframe icing depends on supercooled liquid water, which approaches its theoretical freezing limit around minus 40 degrees Celsius.

The crew’s reported icing encounter deserves serious examination. It doesn’t give any of us permission to declare the complete accident sequence proven.

During the extreme descent, increasing speed and aerodynamic loads may have caused part of the tail to separate. Losing an essential pitch control surface would make recovery impossible, depending on the damage and the aircraft’s condition.

Investigators recovered three pieces of the left elevator between 1.3 and 3.8 miles from the impact site. They have yet to establish whether its separation contributed to the initial loss of control or resulted from forces acting on the aircraft during the descent.

That is a serious question involving physical evidence. It deserves considerably more attention than someone’s unsupported claim about a missile.

Then there’s the supposedly devastating observation that you “can’t see any aircraft parts on the ground”.

What exactly were these people expecting to see? A smashed up fuselage beside the road, complete with wings and a registration conveniently facing the camera?

Given the aircraft’s mass and impact speed, extensive fragmentation is a credible explanation for why little in the footage resembled a recognisable aircraft.

A violent impact can break an aircraft into small pieces, with wreckage scattered, buried or damaged by fire.

An aircraft striking the ground at close to the speed of sound would carry enormous kinetic energy because of its mass and velocity, potentially comparable to several tonnes of TNT. The impact could reduce much of it to tiny fragments, leaving little recognisable as an aircraft, being effectively “atomised”.

The recovery of aircraft components already undermines the assertion that there was no plane. Failing to identify wreckage in a video says little about what investigators can recover from the scene.

What amazes me is how quickly a lack of knowledge becomes absolute certainty. Someone doesn’t understand the wreckage, so the wreckage must be suspicious. A detail is missing from an early report, so someone must be hiding it.

These people then demand that everyone else disprove whatever they’ve imagined.

I’m prepared to explain what I consider plausible and acknowledge where the evidence remains incomplete. If the investigation establishes a different cause, my assessment will have to change.

Anyone alleging a missile strike or government involvement should bring evidence capable of supporting that accusation. A YouTube comparison with the Pentagon and a comment about missing wings won’t do it.

Nine people died, and their families are now living with that loss. Before posting another smug declaration about what “really happened”, perhaps these self-appointed investigators should consider whether they would repeat it while standing in front of those families.