GPS jamming active when King Air struck mountain
NTSB reports on New Mexico air ambulance crash that killed four, sparked wildfire
A Beechcraft King Air collided with a New Mexico mountain ridge while attempting an instrument approach shortly after midnight on a moonless May 14, killing four people and igniting a wildfire that took nearly a month to extinguish. GPS interference—an increasingly common event in recent years—figures prominently in the preliminary report released by the NTSB.
Investigators plotted GPS data of the fatal air ambulance flight from two sources: recorded ADS-B data, and a Spidertracks device onboard the aircraft. Two flight nurses and two pilots planned a short flight from their home base in Roswell Air Center Airport to Sierra Blanca Regional Airport in Ruidoso. Visibility was 10 miles with clear skies when the flight departed Roswell to pick up a patient for transport to Albuquerque.
It is not clear whether the flight crew was aware of the GPS jamming underway in the region before the King Air lifted off at 11:52 p.m. local time on May 13. The pilots, operating under FAR Part 135, contacted air traffic control at 11:54 p.m. during the initial climb, and the flight was cleared "as filed" to their destination, minutes away, and directed to maintain 12,000 feet.
Investigators compared the GPS data recorded by ADS-B and Spidertracks and found discrepancies in recorded altitudes that coincided with the military GPS jamming that was underway at the time.
"The data from both sources were consistent with each other, except the recorded Spidertracks GPS altitude was generally about 600 [feet] higher than the recorded ADS-B altitudes and there were large gaps in the recorded ADS-B data," the preliminary report states. Just after midnight, an air traffic controller advised the King Air crew they were at 13,000 feet, 1,000 feet above their assigned altitude, and the pilots responded they were descending to their assigned altitude and had "lost GPS capability." The pilot requested a heading, and ATC vectored the aircraft to 275 degrees toward Ruidoso. The pilot requested the GPS approach to Runway 24.
At 12:01 a.m., the approach controller contacted their operations supervisor to relay a request that the military stop jamming GPS, a call the operations supervisor placed at 12:05 a.m., according to the report. Two minutes later, the ADS-B data, which had been recorded at one-minute intervals during the jamming, resumed recording as normal, with positions updated every 2 to 3 seconds.
cont…
https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2026/june/18/gps-jamming-active-when-king-air-struck-mountain