Investigation Team On-Site at Scene of Medical Flight Crash as New Clues Surface: ‘I Knew the Plane Was in Trouble…’

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Authorities are trying to determine the cause of the crash of a medical transport flight that killed all five people aboard the plane, including a patient, in a mountainous area in northern Nevada.

The National Transportation Safety Board has sent in a seven-member team of investigators to the site of Friday night’s crash near Stagecoach.

The crash occurred amid a winter storm warning issued by the National Weather Service in Reno for large swaths of Nevada, including parts of Lyon County. It was snowing steadily with winds around 20 mph with gusts up to 30 mph.

Visibility was under two miles with a cloud ceiling about 2,000 feet above ground when the flight left Reno for Salt Lake City, Utah, and went down, according to the weather service.

Care Flight, which provides ambulance service by plane and helicopter, identified the downed aircraft as a Pilatus PC-12 and said the pilot, a flight nurse, a flight paramedic, a patient and a patient’s family member all died.

Robin Hays, a Stagecoach resident and a former flight nurse, said she heard the sputtering plane fly over her house before crashing behind her property.

“I knew the plane was in trouble,” 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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