A 40-year-old Nevada woman was killed when a small homebuilt airplane crashed on Saturday morning in Washington County, Nevada, authorities said, becoming the latest fatality in a string of recent small-aircraft accidents across the country.
Federal safety officials said a National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigator was expected to reach the crash site on Sunday to begin documenting the scene and examining the wreckage of the Vans RV-8, which went down about 9:45 a.m. Mountain Standard Time on Feb. 28.
In a statement to NTD, a spokesperson said the plane went down “under unknown circumstances,” and that the plane will be moved to a secure facility for more detailed analysis.
The safety board said that the on-scene work is strictly a fact-finding stage and that officials will not speculate about what caused the crash or assign blame while evidence is still being gathered.
Investigators will focus on three broad areas—the pilot, the plane, and the surrounding operating environment—and will collect items such as air traffic control recordings, radar-based flight-track data, and weather information from around the time of the accident.
As part of the probe, the board said it will also review the pilot’s activities in the 72 hours before the crash to see whether fatigue, health issues, or other factors could have affected her ability to fly safely.
The Washington County fatality follows a series of small-aircraft crashes in recent weeks that have killed or injured general aviation pilots and passengers from Arkansas to Maryland, Texas, Colorado, Arizona, North Carolina, and Maine.
In less serious incidents, a Piper PA-18 flipped on a frozen lake in Maine on Feb. 20, though the pilot was unhurt. The next day, a Cessna 177B went down in a remote area of eastern Arizona, injuring two people who were later reported in stable condition.