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Crash near Butler Airport
A skydiving plane crash near Butler Memorial Airport in Butler, Missouri killed 12 people on Sunday, with a pilot and 11 passengers on board, authorities said.
“A pilot and 11 skydivers were killed on Sunday when an airplane crashed near an airport in Missouri”
The crash happened shortly after the plane took off around 11:30 a.m. local time, and the aircraft was engulfed in flames in a field near the airport, according to the Missouri State Highway Patrol and ABC News affiliate KMBC-TV in Kansas City, Missouri.
Bates County Sheriff Chad Anderson said during a news briefing that the crash occurred shortly after the plane took off, and he confirmed it was a skydiving flight operating out of Butler Memorial Airport.
Dennis Jacobs, the acting airport manager and Bates County Emergency Management Agency director, said the plane “had just taken off and made a left turn” before the crash, and he described his view that it was “losing power” and stalled before going down nose first and catching fire.
The FAA identified the aircraft as a Pacific Aerospace P750 and said air traffic services were not being provided at the time, while the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration are investigating.
Witnesses, investigators, and statements
Witnesses and family members watched the crash unfold, and Anderson said there were family members who witnessed the crash while clergy and volunteers went to the site to assist relatives.
Dennis Jacobs told the Associated Press that the private plane was operated by Skydive Kansas City and that first responders checked the area under the flight path and did not find anyone who might have tried to jump out before the plane came down.
Aviation safety expert Jeff Guzzetti said poor maintenance has been a factor in a number of previous skydiving plane crashes because these companies are not held to a high standard under FAA rules, and he said there has been “a whole history of skydiving accidents for inadequate maintenance and deficient safety culture.”
NTSB Vice Chairman Michael Graham told reporters that “This is the beginning of a long process,” and he said the agency would not be determining what happens overnight.
Skydive Kansas City said in a statement that “This is a devastating loss for everyone connected to Skydive Kansas City,” and it said authorities were withholding the names of those killed pending notification of next of kin.
What’s at stake next
Investigators said the exact cause of the crash will not be clear for a year or more until the NTSB publishes its final report, and the NTSB is leading the investigation with assistance from the FAA.
““This is the beginning of a long process,” the NTSB official told reporters Monday.”
NBC News reported that the NTSB official said investigators would be picking up perishable evidence at the scene and would not be drawing conclusions until later, and it described the probe as “in its infancy.”
The FAA said the plane was manufactured in 2010 by Pacific Aerospace in New Zealand and that it was not required to have a cockpit voice recorder or flight data recorder on board, commonly known as the “black boxes,” while NTSB Vice Chairman Michael Graham said investigators would look for other avionics that may be salvageable.
CBS News quoted witness Bailey Reed saying “They didn’t have time to jump,” and she said the parachutes “wouldn’t have deployed and there was no way anyone could have jumped and survived that.”
Robert Sumwalt, the former chair of the NTSB, said key to the investigation is “going to be looking at the mechanical condition of the airplane itself, the engine,” and he said the NTSB will also be looking at the training of the pilot and FAA oversight for the operation.
