A little-reported medical evacuation transport flight that crashed in New Mexico in May has received a fresh groundswell of media scrutiny, prompting the National Transportation Safety Board to say it is actively investigating the incident almost three months later.The flight traveling from Roswell Air Center, New Mexico, to Sierra Blanca Regional Airport in the same state in the early hours of May 14 flew near where the U.S. military was conducting “GPS jamming activities,” and the aircraft crashed, killing the four people on board.A June preliminary report from the NTSB about the crash noted that the two pilots had been given a ForeFlight briefing, the preflight bulletins for pilots more commonly known as Notice to Airmen Information, that GPS might be unavailable during the time of their flight due to the activity at White Sands Missile Range at the time.
The Associated Press reported on the incident at the time and again in June, but it received little notice nationwide. Now, fresh reporting from Wired last week helped breathe new life into the circumstances surrounding the crash, and it took on a life of its own on social media on Tuesday.Such was the crescendo of fresh scrutiny that the NTSB was compelled to release a statement on Wednesday saying it is still “actively investigating the crash” and that investigators have “not yet determined the probable cause or any contributing factors to the accident.”An NTSB spokesperson reiterated to the Washington Examiner that “the crash is still under investigation — and as the statement notes — no causes or contributing factors have been determined at this time,” but declined to answer additional questions.What happened?
