By HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH and MEGAN JANETSKY
Air traffic controllers lost communication for about 10 minutes with a small Mexican Navy plane carrying a young medical patient and seven others before it crashed off the Texas coast in thick fog, killing at least five people, Mexico’s president said Tuesday.
Authorities initially believed the plane had landed safely at its destination in Galveston, near Houston, before learning it had gone down Monday afternoon, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said. A search-and-rescue operation in waters near Galveston pulled two survivors from the plane’s wreckage, while one remained missing, Mexico’s Navy said.
U.S. authorities are investigating the cause, but the National Transportation Safety Board said Tuesday that it could take a week or more to recover the aircraft.
“What happened is very tragic,” Sheinbaum said in her morning press briefing, noting that sailors were among the dead. The Mexican Navy officers had been working with a group that transports Mexican children with severe burns to a hospital in Galveston.
Plane was too low as it descended
As the twin turboprop Beech King Air 350i approached Sholes International Airport in Galveston, radar shows it was far too low, said Jeff Guzzetti, a former NTSB and Federal Aviation Administration crash investigator.
A navigation system for the runway where the plane was supposed to land had been out of service for about a week, Guzzetti said. The system sends signals to the airplane cockpit that helps pilots navigate in the kind of bad weather that had enveloped the area. The fog was so thick that meteorologists estimated only about a half-mile of visibility.
The pilot should have aborted the landing if the runway wasn’t visible at an altitude of 205 feet, climbing back up before trying again or looking for another airport entirely, Guzzetti said.
Guzzetti said the reported radar track shows that the pilot was descending rapidly below 200 feet, a full 2 miles away from the runway.
“Maybe there was some sort of mechanical malfunction,” he said. “But just looking at the recorded flight track and comparing it with the weather and the airport equipment outage, seems to me that this landing approach should never have occurred.”
Witness describes crash scene
The plane crashed in a bay near the base of the causeway connecting Galveston Island to the mainland. The popular beach destination is about 50 miles southeast of Houston.
Sky Decker, a professional yacht captain who lives about a mile from the crash site, said he jumped in his boat to see if he could help. He picked up two police officers who guided him through the thick fog to the nearly submerged plane. Decker jumped into the water and found a badly injured woman trapped beneath chairs and other debris.
“She had maybe 3 inches of air gap to breathe in,” he said. “And there was jet fuel in there mixed with the water, fumes real bad. She was really fighting for her life.”
He said he also pulled out a man seated in front of her who had already died.
Investigators dig into the cause
Crews from the NTSB and Federal Aviation Administration rushed to the scene.
A spokesperson for the NTSB said in an email that investigators will review maintenance records, weather forecasts and air traffic control communications. A preliminary report is expected within 30 days.
Guzzetti said the investigation also will likely look into how serious the young patient’s medical condition was and how motivated the pilot was to land.
“There have been previous accidents in the air medical community where pilots try to push their luck in order to save the patient,” he said.
The aircraft had a “very, very proven design,” said aviation safety expert John Cox. He said it’s the latest version of a series that has been in use since the 1960s and would have been outfitted with all the modern electronics, avionics and equipment.
Plane was helping with medical mission
Mexico’s Navy said the plane was helping with a medical mission in coordination with the Michou and Mau Foundation.
The charity was founded after a mother died trying to save her kids from a fire. One child died, while another survived after receiving treatment at Shriners Children’s Texas in Galveston. Over 23 years, the foundation has helped transfer more than 2,000 patients to that hospital and other medical facilities with burn expertise, according to the charity’s website.
In a social media post, the foundation offered condolences to the families of the crash victims.
Shriners Children’s Texas said in a statement that it learned of the crash with “profound sadness” but wasn’t able to provide any information about the child’s condition because the child hadn’t yet been admitted.
Crash comes amid focus on aviation safety
This latest crash comes amid a year of intense scrutiny on aviation safety after a string of high-profile crashes and the flight disruptions during the government shutdown driven by the shortage of air traffic controllers.
The January midair collision between an Army helicopter and an airliner near Washington, D.C., was followed by the crash of a medical transport plane in Philadelphia. This fall’s fiery UPS plane crash only added to the concerns. Still, the total number of crashes in 2025 was actually down a bit from last year, and experts say flying remains safe overall.
Hallie Golden contributed to this report.
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