"The twin-engine Beechcraft King Air was flying from Roswell to Ruidoso in early May to collect a patient when its pilots suddenly lost access to their modern navigation systems. Pictured is the plane's flight path"
Posted on 08/05/2026 10:24:31 AM PDT by DFG
A US military GPS-jamming exercise has been linked to a medevac plane crash that killed four people in the mountains of New Mexico.
The twin-engine Beechcraft King Air was flying from Roswell to Ruidoso in early May to collect a patient when its pilots suddenly lost access to their modern navigation systems.
It was a clear, nearly moonless night, leaving the crew with few visual references as they flew over the dark and sparsely populated landscape.
But about 100 miles away, military personnel were testing technology designed to disrupt GPS signals during an electronic warfare event at White Sands Missile Range, according to records from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
The disruption forced the two pilots to rely on older navigation methods as air traffic controllers scrambled to assist several aircraft reporting similar problems.
The pilots eventually abandoned their instrument approach and attempted to fly visually toward the lights of Ruidoso's airport, unaware that the 10,000-foot Capitan Mountains stood directly in their path.
All four people aboard were killed when the aircraft slammed into the rising mountainside at full speed, WIRED reported.
The disaster marked the first fatal civilian plane crash in the US known to be linked to electronic warfare and has raised urgent concerns about military technology interfering with civilian aviation.
The National Transportation Safety Board’s preliminary report described the GPS problems encountered by the pilots, but investigators will not determine the crash’s cause until the final report is completed next year.
The crew was dispatched at 11pm on May 13 to collect a patient in Ruidoso and transport them to Albuquerque.
Captain Keelan Clark, 30, and First Officer Ali Kawsara, 23, were joined by nurses Sarah Clark, 33, and Jamie Novick, 33.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.com ...
"The twin-engine Beechcraft King Air was flying from Roswell to Ruidoso in early May to collect a patient when its pilots suddenly lost access to their modern navigation systems. Pictured is the plane's flight path"
“Clark had received his commercial pilot’s license about 18 months earlier and was promoted to captain the previous month, while Kawsara had been on the job for two months after previously flying cargo planes.”
“The FAA had warned pilots that the exercises could disrupt GPS signals up to 400 miles away between May 12 and 18.”
airplanes cannot fly at night without GPS????
If they had a mountain between them and the airport, how did they see the lights?...
When I was young, I used road maps and Thomas Bros guides. I looked at passing street signs and read the numbers on houses.
I'm guessing these are alien skills to younger car drivers. Take away their GPS, and they're helpless behind the wheel.
The same is likely true of many younger airplane pilots and sea captains.
Kust guessing but poor article wording may be obscuring that they were flying in the compass or otherwise known direction of those lights. Instead of eventually sering them, they crashed into an unlit mountainside instead.
No radar giving proximity collision warning to a plane like that?
Exactly, pilots over dependent on modern NAVAIDS are not pilots anymore. They are system operators that occupy a seat in he cockpit.
I live in Rui and part of my ranch is near this.
This was a serious mystery and there is more to it than GPS jamming.
Like I suspect this was also some sort of EMP device. All my solid state controls for water pumps went bad this night. The old analog timers were not affected. No circuit breaker popped. No storms.
For those unaware, Trinity Site is close as is White Sands. Lots of stuff weirder than Area 51 happens here.
See my post above.
I’ve landed plenty of times at Alto (the airport) with and without GPS. It’s nice in the fog, but this was a clear night.
I was an Army Aviator. When I was stationed at Fort Bliss, there were always NOTAMs concerning GPS-jamming exercises at White Sands Missile Range.
I have a difficult time believing that a minimally experienced pilot couldn’t contact some ATC entity (such as El Paso Approach or Albuquerque Center) that has radar capability for vectoring to final at their destination. Methinks the pilots refused to believe they were lost or needed help. Or, they didn’t think to climb to an altitude where radio contact was possible. Not to mention Albuquerque Radio, the nearest Flight Service Station who would have provided assistance.
No Jepp charts, no sectionals, no ADF as a last resort. Just iPad and GPS.
I don’t go t on the freakin’ ROAD without paper maps.
Flying into mountains is generally called pilot error.
Most likely, the GPS signal was not jammed, but was instead, spoofed. It was telling them they were on course when they were not.
Sounds like they were testing something to jam Iranian drones.
Looks like it works.
same
about the roads.
and maps
Looks like a 24 runway which has localizer and vertical clearance support.
Somebody messed up.
“Most likely, the GPS signal was not jammed, but was instead, spoofed. It was telling them they were on course when they were not.”
Read the article.
“Methinks the pilots refused to believe they were lost or needed help”
According to the track they were on course for a runway 24 landing but didn’t have vertical clearance.
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It's seldom one catastrophic failure that gets you in aviation - it's a string of bad decisions, poor communications and bad luck.
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