As we reported earlier this week, John David Duggar recently crashed a plane that he was flying with his wife and two-year-old daughter aboard.

Thankfully, everyone survived, and no one was seriously injured.

Insiders say John David insists that he was not at fault for the incident, blaming the crash on a faulty fuel gauge.

But if no one was hurt and John David's wasn't responsible -- then why did his family keep the incident under wraps for months?

Yes, the crash might have just made headlines this week.

But we now know that it happened back on October 29 of last year.

As is too often the case with the Duggar family, this harrowing event was kept under wraps.

As new information is revealed and a clear picture of what happened that day begins to emerge ...

... it becomes more apparent that John David and his family were hoping that news of the crash would never be made public.

And their reasons for keeping it a secret may have had something to do with Josh Duggar's child pornography trial.

Prior to Josh's arrest in April of 2021, the Duggars delighted in sharing every aspect of their lives with their adoring public.

These days, however, they regard the press and social media with suspicion, posting only when they feel they need to and never granting interviews.

There was a time when something like a plane crash from which all passengers miraculously emerged unscathed would have been fodder for the family's TLC reality show.

John David would have been praised for his courage and competency in protecting those on board, and fans would have eaten the whole thing up.

In this case, however, various media outlets were forced to piece the incident together based on vague information provided by the local sheriff's department.

“A family from Arkansas ran out of fuel and landed in a field," reads a statement from county law enforcement obtained by UK tabloid The Sun.

Dispatch later confirmed that John David called 911 to the scene.

The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the crash, and while all on board were confirmed to be uninjured, the plane suffered "substantial" damage in the crash.

That's putting it very mildly.

Piper PA-30 Fixed Wing Multi-Engine registered to John David was reportedly unsalvageable.

That plane model was valued at around $278,000 when Jim Bob purchased it in 2020.

He might have saved money by buying a used aircraft.

Also, the Duggars likely received a tax break.

That is because  John David is the head of a non-proifit organization called Medic Corps.

That controversial organization's alleged goal is to assist with disaster relief efforts.

However, sources claim that John David had only flown this plane seven times before the totaling it.

It appears that they were all pleasure flights.

That helps us to speculate about why the story was buried for months.

So it's possible that in addition to keeping a low profile because of the Josh scandal, the Duggars attempted to keep this incident private because of their embarrassment over the circumstances.

But if the family were still on good terms with fans, they almost certainly would have gotten in front of the media narrative.

They would have then shared their account of John David's "heroism" in the face of impossible odds.

So the incident serves as yet another reminder of the ways in which Jim Bob has switched up his media strategy in the wake of his family's most egregious scandal yet.

For now, we're seeing less of the Duggars, which is obviously a good thing -- but don't expect that to last.

If we know anything about Jim Bob, he's currently obsessing over plans to rebuild his reputation -- as well as the multi-million dollar media empire that's enabled him to provde for 19 kids.