BUTLER, Mo. – Federal safety investigators said in a new preliminary report that they found no indication that engine failure caused the fiery crash of a plane on a skydiving outing last month in Missouri that killed all 12 people aboard, including several very experienced jumpers.
The report issued Thursday by the National Transportation Safety Board also did not flag any other serious safety or mechanical failures that could have led to the crash, which happened just after takeoff on a clear day.
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The NTSB released the findings based on initial inspections of the badly damaged wreckage and flight records. The report said there were no indications of any precrash mechanical malfunctions or failures in the engine that would have prevented the normal operation of the plane.
In fact, NTSB said it appeared that the engine of the single-engine turboprop plane had been producing power at the time of the crash.
“I was surprised that they had determined that the engine was producing power,” said Jeff Guzzetti, president of Guzzetti Aviation Risk Discovery, an aviation safety consultancy. “Initially I thought it smacked of a potential engine problem and that the pilot had been trying to return to the airport.”
The federal agency also said a post-accident sample from the fuel truck found the fuel to be free of sediment or debris, and a review of the skydiving business operators’ software showed that the airplane had met the weight and balance limitations for the flight.
The report raised no concerns about the weather or the pilot, who had accumulated over 4,100 total flight hours and was in his second consecutive jump season working for the operator, Skydive Kansas City.
The airplane was not equipped with a crashworthy voice or data recorder, like those that record flight data on commercial planes, nor was it required to be, investigators said. The NTSB report did note, however, that its investigators had recovered damaged GoPro cameras from the wreckage.
The federal agency's investigation into the accident was ongoing, and a final report often takes a year or more to complete.
The June 14 crash happened about an hour south of Kansas City, when the Pacific Aerospace 750XL carrying a pilot and 11 skydivers took off from Butler Memorial Airport at 11:25 a.m. on a clear day.
During the initial climb, the airplane began a gradual turn to the left, with both wings eventually becoming almost perpendicular to the ground before it slammed into a field, nose down, and burst into flames, investigators said.
The straight up-and-down position of the wings meant they could no longer produce enough aerodynamic lift to keep the plane in the air and the NTSB will have to figure out why that happened, Guzzetti said.
The fire inflicted significant damage to the aircraft's major structural components, as well as the cockpit, the cabin and the fuel system, investigators said.
Some family members of those who died were at the airport to watch the jump and witnessed the crash, authorities said. The United States Parachute Association, skydiving’s governing body, said its technology director, Jen Sharp, was among those killed.
Skydive Kansas City called the crash a “devastating loss."
Poor maintenance is often a factor when skydiving planes crash and the NTSB has previously raised concerns about the weak oversight for skydiving operators in past crash investigations. The agency said after a 2019 crash that killed 11 people in Hawaii that the FAA’s regulatory system isn’t strong enough to ensure the safety of skydiving flights.
The Federal Aviation Administration has yet to adopt the NTSB’s recommendations, but said it established a committee in April that will recommend ways to increase skydiving safety and will consider the safety board’s proposals.
The United States Parachute Association said that Skydive Kansas City adheres to the safety standards set by the largest skydiving organization in the world, including all FAA maintenance requirements. The skydiving industry says it has a strong safety record. The association said that last year nearly 3.5 million jumps were completed and that 16 civilians died, the majority from human error.
The plane that crashed was built in 2010, according to FAA records. It made two successful flights the morning of the crash, the NTSB said. It is popular for skydiving and certified to be operated by a single pilot.
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