Published Aug 6, 2026, 10:17 AM EDT
"The NTSB has not yet determined the probable cause or any contributing factors to the accident"
Eight minutes after the medevac plane lifted off from Roswell, its GPS went dark. The crew was flying a Beechcraft King Air through the New Mexico night toward a patient waiting near Ruidoso. Without satellite navigation, they began asking for help. An air traffic controller called a supervisor, who reached out to the military and asked it to stop jamming, so they stopped jamming. The plane's GPS came back, and the crew then reported the airport in sight. They accepted a visual approach, the kind flown by looking out the window rather than by instruments. With the aircraft lined up, the supervisor told the military it could turn the jamming back on. Roughly five minutes later, the King Air struck a mountain ridge in the dark. All four people aboard were killed. That sequence of events comes from a preliminary report released by the National Transportation Safety Board, and it has drawn national attention for a reason. It is believed to be the first known case in which military GPS jamming has been linked to a fatal civilian plane crash in American airspace.
