Its deviation from the normal flight path, initially believed to be the result of pilot error, was revised to "unknown" given that the contribution of other factors could not be definitively ruled out.

On February 19, 1955 at 7:03 am, TWA flight 260 en route from Albuquerque, New Mexico to Santa Fe, New Mexico received an IFR clearance from the Albuquerque tower ("ATC clears TWA 260 for approach at the Santa Fe Airport via Victor 19 climb northbound on the back course of the ILS localizer").

[3] Captain Ivan Spong, the pilot of Flight 260, knew the Albuquerque-Santa Fe route well and had flown it a dozen times that month.

According to a family member quoted by Charles Williams, the pilot expressed uneasiness when he had to make the trip to Santa Fe in bad weather.

[3] First Officer Jesse James Creason Jr., formally known as J.J., acquired his aircraft experience by operating crop dusters, receiving flight training, and serving in the U.S. Army Air Corps.

[8] Captain Larry DeCelles worked cooperatively with the CAB's investigators to understand pilot reports of latent faults in a fluxgate compass that appeared only after extended intervals with turn bank-angle.

After these investigations, the CAB issued a third version of the report on June 15, 1960 naming the probable cause as "deviation from the prescribed flight path for reasons unknown" given that malfunction of the fluxgate compass as a contributing factor could not be entirely ruled out.

[citation needed] The Board recognizes that the theory of the fluxgate compass error advanced by the Air Line Pilots Association can not be disproven.

[13] Fifty years after the crash, Hugh Prather, a man who grew up in the shadows of the Sandia Mountains, fixed a simple memorial to the largest piece of remaining wreckage.

Eventually, she and her son moved from Kansas City to Phoenix to live with her husband's sister and cousin in order to get away from the harassment.