Cessna P206 N2537X

Summary

On 19 April 2008 at about 21:15 local time, a Cessna P206 registered N2537X was involved in an accident near Mount Vernon, Missouri, United States. 7 people were on board and 2 died, 2 were seriously injured. The aircraft was destroyed. The NTSB has published a probable cause for this accident; it is quoted in full below.

Date

19 April 2008 at 21:15

Classification

Accident

Location

Mount Vernon, Missouri, United States

Coordinates

37.0692, -93.8858

Aircraft

Cessna P206

Registration

N2537X

Category

Airplane

Engines

1

Operator

Not recorded

Operating rule

Part 91: General Aviation

Purpose of flight

Skydiving

Phase of flight

Not recorded

Route

Mount Vernon → Unknown

Aircraft damage

Destroyed

Weather

VMC

Light

Day

NTSB number

DEN08FA078

2 people died.

The pilot's failure to maintain adequate airspeed, resulting in an inadvertent stall/spin. Contributing factors in this accident were the entanglement of the parachute in the elevator control system, reducing the pilot's ability to regain control.

Quoted verbatim from the NTSB record. This site does not paraphrase or interpret it.

Read the full NTSB narrative

Surviving skydivers said that as the airplane was climbing to the jump altitude of 10,500 feet agl, the stall warning horn sounded intermittently several times. They paid no particular attention to it because they had heard it on previous flights. When the airplane reached the jump altitude, the pilot signaled for one of the parachutists to open the door. When she did, she told the pilot that the airplane had overshot the drop zone by approximately 1 mile. As the pilot started a right turn back towards the drop zone, the stall warning horn sounded again, then the airplane "rolled off on its right wing" and entered a spin. The skydivers became disoriented and nauseated. Four skydivers managed to bail out safely, but one of them broke her right leg when she struck the right horizontal stabilizer after exiting the airplane. The reserve parachute on the fifth skydiver deployed and became entangled around the tail of the airplane. She sustained fatal injuries. The sixth skydiver was unable to exit the airplane and was found inside, fatally injured. The pilot was seriously injured. Ground witnesses reported hearing the engine RPMs decrease, then saw the airplane spinning. Somewhere between 1,000 and 5,000 feet, the airplane leveled out for a few seconds and witnesses saw a parachute wrapped around the tail. The airplane then spun or dove to the ground. Downloaded data from the onboard GPS and Automated Activation Devices worn by three of the skydivers corroborated these accounts.

Quoted verbatim from the NTSB record.