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Medical flight crashes
Plane accident kills 5 near Alpine
ALPINE An air ambulance crashed shortly after takeoff from a West Texas airport Sunday, killing all five people on board.
The crash happened about 12:15 a.m. about a mile east of Alpine-Casparis Municipal Airport, about 200 miles southeast of El Paso. The twin-engine Cessna 421 had just taken off for Midland International Airport in Midland, when it went down in an open area, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
The aircraft was carrying a patient and her husband to Midland, the Texas Department of Public Safety said.
It identified the dead as 73-year-old patient Mary Folger, her 78-year-old husband, Guy Richard Folger, both of Midland; two flight nurses, 49-year-old Sharon Falkner of Fort Davis, and 42-year-old Tracy Chambers of Alpine; and 59-year-old pilot Ted Caffarel of Beaumont.
Caffarel was apparently trying to make an emergency landing when the plane hit a rut in the muddy field, overturned and burned, the DPS said.
The FAA listed the aircraft as registered to O’Hara Flying Service II LP of Amarillo. Company owner Denny O’Hara declined to comment to The Associated Press.
The National Transportation Safety Board will lead the investigation, FAA spokeswoman Elizabeth Corey said.
The crash is the first in West Texas of an air ambulance since March 21, 2004, when an air ambulance helicopter crash killed four people near Pyote and destroyed a Bell 407 helicopter.
Those killed in that crash included Annalillia Urias, 20, her 3-month-old son, Pedro Urias Modesto, pilot Mickey Price, 46, of Dumas, and paramedic Paul Lujan, 32, of Crane. MCH flight nurse Ronald Stephens, 35 at the time, was the lone survivor.
According to Med-Trans officials, an NTSB report stated, Price left the base hangar at Schlemeyer Field near Odessa and arrived at Medical Center Hospital to pick up Stephens, the flight nurse, and Lujan, the paramedic, for a flight to Alpine. The flight left Odessa at 11:56 p.m. March 20, 2004, for Big Bend Regional Medical Center.
It arrived in Alpine at 12:48 a.m. March 21, 2004. At 1:43 a.m., Urias and her son boarded the helicopter and left Big Bend Regional Medical Center for University Medical Center in Lubbock, the report said.
At 2:19 a.m., the pilot contacted MCH dispatch and "began a position report when he stated, hold on a (minute) dispatch, give me something to look at.’"
There was nothing after that and DPS was notified of a missing helicopter at 3:20 a.m. March 21.
The Associated Press and Odessa American contributed to this report.
