MedEvac Crashes

As they flew right into the side of a mountain. You would think the helicopter GPS would have avoided the mountain, except for one little fact... the military was testing a GPS jammer at the same time!

Everyone knew of the jamming, and there was a "Notice to Airmen" about it.

Military jamming disrupted a medical plane’s GPS system before it crashed last month in New Mexico

AP News

By  JOSH FUNK

June 18, 2026

The GPS system on a small medical plane that crashed into a mountainside last month in New Mexico malfunctioned because the military was jamming that signal throughout the area at the time although pilots had been warned to expect that, according to federal investigators.

Four people died in the pre-dawn crash on May 14 that sparked a wildfire that burned for weeks in the rugged Capitan Mountains around Ruidoso where the plane was trying to land that night.

The National Transportation Safety Board released a preliminary report on the crash Wednesday that described the GPS problems the pilots encountered, but investigators won’t identify the cause of the crash until they finish their final report sometime next year.

Experts say the pilots should have been able to land safely by relying on ground-based navigation systems or flying visually, but relying on GPS is popular because it is so precise.

It sounds like the pilots had a problem flying under visual flight rules. There were no street lights, no moon, just dark mountain peaks

The NTSB said that after the pilots of the plane operated by Trans Aero MedEvac started having problems, the air traffic controller gave them headings to follow into the airport so they could get lined up for an approach relying on the airport’s instrument landing system. Three other planes in the area also reported GPS problems around the same time.

[...]

At one point, the controller even contacted the military and got it to shut down the jammers. But then shortly before the crash, the pilots told controllers they had the airport in sight and planned to land visually, so controllers gave the military the OK to resume jamming.

But the air traffic controllers were stressed by the extra workload the jamming caused. Wired.com  reported that,

Clark and Kawsara took off at eight minutes to midnight and initially headed due west, toward Ruidoso. The weather was clear, but because the night was nearly moonless and the area is rural, the only visual references available were the lights of scattered settlements. “It’s a black hole out there,” says Juan Browne, an airline pilot who hosts a crash-investigation podcast.

Unable to orient themselves without visual cues, the pilots called up Albuquerque Air Route Traffic Control Center—Albuquerque Center, for short—and requested permission to fly instruments-only to Ruidoso. The request was approved.

Working weekends and extra hours took their toll on the air controllers.

In retrospect, tragedy might have been avoided if Albuquerque air traffic control had been able to pay closer attention to the young pilots in the King Air. But tonight they were busy. Three other aircraft also reported that they’d lost their GPS and needed help. One was struggling to get a bearing on a radio beacon.

It seems to have been a whole series of errors that led to the crash in the middle of nowhere, with a new moon, in mountainous terrain, and no GPS! Also, the Albuquerque Air Route Traffic Control Center was understaffed in May of 2025, so the Albuquerque Air Route Traffic Control Center was...

• Under staffing pressure (less spare capacity)
• Unusual operational conditions (such as GPS interference testing)
• An unscheduled medical flight with time pressure and a complex mission
• Aircraft flying where there were no street lights, no moon, just dark mountain peaks
• A system that has less margin for recovery.

As we used to call it... "A cluster fuck!"