US Military GPS Jamming Exercise Suspected of Contributing to Civilian Plane Crash in New Mexico
Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:
Medevac Flight Lost Signal Before Flying Into A Mountain, Killing Everyone Onboard:
While the GPS interference seemingly did not directly cause the crash, it's apparent that it was the first domino in a chain of events that led to the fatal accident. This raises urgent questions about GPS jamming as reported incidents of GPS interference mount across the world.
This switch meant that the pilots would now primarily fly the plane using instruments in the cockpit instead of looking outside the windows. This is a normal procedure and is what most passenger airliners use during operations. Furthermore, it seems that the pilots have filed for clearance before they took off, as evidenced by their as filed" clearance to SRR.
Around five minutes after this radio communication, ATC called the military and asked them to stop their GPS jamming activities in the meantime. At 12:07 am, the NTSB said that the Beechcraft's GPS instruments resumed regular recording. The pilots then called Albuquerque Center a minute after this, saying that they had a visual on Ruidoso," the town nearest to SRR, and that they were transitioning to visual flight rules (VFR). This meant that they were moving away from the direct control of the ATC and would navigate and fly using visual cues.
The conditions meant that there was no available illumination to light the ground. It is still unknown what happened next or what the pilots saw (or didn't see), but the preliminary report says the last recorded information saw the plane climbing from 9,400 feet to 9,823 feet at a ground speed of 150 knots (172 mph). It impacted terrain at about 9,950 feet - some 230 feet below the Capitan Mountains Summit Radio Facility.
Because they could not see that the Capitan Mountains were still between them and their destination, they likely started their descent too early. As soon as the aircraft went below the peak, they would've lost visual with the town, and it seemed that the pilots attempted to climb when they realized that there was a massive obstacle in front of them. Unfortunately, it seems that their efforts were too late, especially at their speeds, resulting in a controlled flight into terrain (CFIT) accident.
This was compounded by a high workload and high-stress situation. Landings and take-offs, in normal situations, are already quite hectic in the cockpit, which is why pilots practice the sterile cockpit rule, which avoids extraneous communications, at times like these. The loss of GPS signals also added to their stress, as they initially planned for an RNAV approach towards SRR. While this generally uses a combination of radio signals, it seems that their system primarily relied on GPS, which was inoperative at that time.
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