Small Medical Plane Crashes In New Mexico Mountains, 4 Dead

2 min readUpdated: May 15, 2026 09:03 AM IST

A small medical aircraft crashed in the Capitan Mountains outside Ruidoso, New Mexico, before dawn on Thursday, killing all four people aboard the plane and starting a wildfire in the surrounding forest, news agency AP reported.

The fire spread to 35 acres by midday amid dry, windy conditions. Lincoln County Manager Jason Burns said officials were “very concerned” about the blaze, with local agencies coordinating with the US Forest Service to contain it.

What we know

The plane, operated by Trans Aero MedEvac, was on a medical transportation mission when it lost radar contact and communications. It had departed from Roswell Air Center and was headed to Sierra Blanca Regional Airport, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

The wreckage was located Thursday morning in steep, rocky terrain that required rescue crews to hike the final half-mile to reach the site. The victims were flight crew and medical personnel; their identities have not been released yet.

A Pattern of Medical Flight Tragedies

Thursday’s crash adds to a troubling record. Over the past 25 years, 25 fatal crashes of medical planes have killed nearly 70 people in the United States, according to NTSB records, AP reported.

Recent incidents include:

January 2025 — A medical jet crashed into a Philadelphia neighbourhood, killing eight people.

August 2024 — Four people died when a plane crashed on the Navajo Nation in northern Arizona.

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December 2024 — A Mexican Navy plane carrying a young patient and seven others crashed off the Texas coast in the Gulf of Mexico.

In 2007, five people were killed when a medical plane crashed in Lincoln National Forest shortly after leaving Ruidoso.

Are medical flights more dangerous?

Aviation safety expert Jeff Guzzetti, a former crash investigator for the NTSB and FAA, told AP that medical flights are not inherently more dangerous than others because they operate between airports like any other aircraft.

Medical helicopter flights, however, carry greater risk because they often land on roads or improvised sites near accident scenes. A study of air medical accidents over a 20-year period ending in 2020 found that more than 70 per cent of fatalities occurred on helicopters, as per the AP report.

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