Mexican Navy medical flight lost contact for several minutes before crashing in Texas
Air traffic controllers lost contact for roughly 10 minutes with a small Mexican Navy plane carrying a young medical patient and seven others before it crashed near the Texas coast, killing at least five people, Mexico’s president said Tuesday.
Officials initially believed the aircraft had landed safely in Galveston, near Houston, before learning Monday afternoon that it had gone down. A search-and-rescue operation recovered two survivors from the wreckage, while one person remained missing, according to Mexico’s Navy.
The plane carried eight people: four Navy officers and four civilians, including a child. Two of the passengers were associated with a nonprofit that transports Mexican children with severe burns to a hospital in Galveston.
President Claudia Sheinbaum expressed condolences to the families, calling the incident “very tragic,” but offered no details on the cause. A U.S. Coast Guard spokesperson confirmed at least five fatalities.
The crash occurred Monday afternoon in a bay near the Galveston causeway connecting the island to the mainland, about 50 miles southeast of Houston. Eyewitness Sky Decker, a yacht captain living nearby, described pulling a critically injured woman from the partially submerged plane and finding another passenger deceased.
It remains unclear whether the weather played a role, though the area had foggy conditions on Monday with visibility down to roughly half a mile. Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board teams were on site gathering information about the crash.
Mexico’s Navy said the flight was part of a medical mission coordinated with the Michou and Mau Foundation, which expressed condolences on social media.
The crash comes amid heightened attention to aviation safety this year following several high-profile accidents and air traffic disruptions. Despite these incidents, experts note that overall air travel remains safe, and the total number of crashes in 2025 is slightly lower than last year.
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