Medical Plane Broke Apart in Mid-air in Nevada Crash That Killed Five, Investigators Say

The emergency medical plane that crashed in Nevada last week disintegrated in mid-air, according to federal investigators.

All five people on board, including the patient, were killed when the Care Flight aircraft went down in Stagecoach, Nevada.

The flight took off from Reno in the middle of a snow and wind storm on Friday night. It crashed about 25 miles east in Stagecoach, far from its intended destination of Salt Lake City. Wind gusts reached 30 mph at the time, and a winter storm warning was in effect.

“How do we know if the airplane broke up in flight? We found parts of the airplane one-half to three-quarters of a mile away” from the crash scene, National Transportation Safety Board investigator Bruce Landsberg said Sunday at a press conference.

A seven-member NTSB team spent at least one day attempting to locate all the parts of the plane and will be in the town for several more days to ensure all pieces are recovered, Landsberg added.

“This is like a three-dimensional puzzle,” he said. “It’s harder when you don’t have the pieces all in one place.”

Care Flight identified the victims as the pilot, a flight nurse, a flight paramedic, a patient and a patient’s family member.

Residents in the 2,000-person town of Stagecoach heard the aircraft, a single-engine Pilatus PC-12 built in 2002, struggling overhead before the crash.

“I knew the plane was in trouble,” Robin Hays told the Reno Gazette Journal. “I knew it was going to crash. I was just hoping it wasn’t going to crash into my house.”

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