Deadly Missouri skydiving plane crash kills 12, raises safety questions

Lacy Reynolds was waiting to catch the next flight when the skydiving plane went down near Butler Memorial Airport in Butler, Missouri, leaving 11 passengers and a pilot dead. Reynolds said the crash made her question whether she could keep skydiving, a reaction that captured the shock rippling through a community built on trust in aircraft, crews and repetition.

The plane had lifted off shortly after 11:30 a.m. on Sunday, June 14, then turned back for reasons investigators have not yet explained before crashing near the airport and catching fire. The Federal Aviation Administration identified the aircraft as a Pacific Aerospace 750XL with tail number N221BN, and later updates said the plane was built in 2010, designed for skydiving operations and capable of carrying up to 17 passengers. Flight-tracking data showed it had logged nine successful flights in the days before the crash, including two earlier that Sunday.

Some family members were at the airport to watch the jump and saw the crash unfold, Bates County Sheriff Chad Anderson said. By June 16, the Bates County Coroner’s Office had released the names of the 12 victims: Kurt John Roy, Michael R. Shanahan, David Hershberger, Sai Karthik Varma Datla, Matthew Swope, Dustin McKinney, Jennifer L. Sharp, Blake Thacker, Marcus Miller, Nicholas Nash, William Fischer and Dane Cordes. Officials and witnesses described many of them as experienced skydivers, underscoring how even seasoned jumpers were caught in the disaster.

The National Transportation Safety Board said a preliminary report is expected within about 30 days, while the full investigation could take a year or longer. NTSB Vice Chairman Michael Graham said investigators will not speculate before evidence is collected and analyzed, a process that will examine the aircraft, the environment and the flight path. For skydiving operators and regulators, the crash has reopened an old and difficult question: how to preserve the freedom and thrill that draw people to the sport while confronting the failure of a plane that had flown successfully just hours before and then ended in fire.