The pilot told investigators that during a skydiving flight, the first jumper scraped his emergency parachute handle while moving toward the jump door in the Cessna U206.
The jumper’s emergency parachute deployed out of the airplane and drug him into the horizontal stabilizer.
The pilot stated that he heard a loud “bang” and focused on maintaining control of the airplane. After the remaining jumpers exited the airplane, the nose of the airplane “dropped straight down.”
The pilot was able to release his seat restraints, open a cargo door, and exit the airplane. The pilot noticed the airplane’s empennage was bent as it spiraled into a field. The pilot opened his emergency parachute and landed safely with the other jumpers. The first jumper sustained serious injuries.
The airplane was destroyed when it crashed in a field near the airport in Butler, Missouri.
According to the first jumper, his D-ring style emergency parachute handle was unknowingly caught on something. While he was positioning himself to the aft door, still unaware of the handle being caught, the ripcord was pulled about 4 inches, causing the emergency parachute to deploy and pull him into the airplane’s empennage.
Probable Cause: The jumper’s unintentional deployment of his emergency parachute and subsequent impact with the airplane’s horizontal stabilizer.
To download the final report. Click here. This will trigger a PDF download to your device.
This May 2024 accident report is provided by the National Transportation Safety Board. Published as an educational tool, it is intended to help pilots learn from the misfortunes of others.
Third party insurance does not cover the jump aircraft.
English lesson for today:
“In some American dialects, the word drug is used as a nonstandard past tense and past participle form of drag. In this case, drug is used in all the same ways that dragged is used.
For example:
He drug the heavy bags through the dirt.
They had drug themselves out of bed before the alarm went off.
The net was drug across the water by a fishing boat.
When drug is used as its past tense and past participle form, drag is considered an irregular verb.
Still, most grammar resources consider drag to be a regular verb, meaning that the past tense and past participle form drug is considered nonstandard.”
(From Thesaurus.com)
I came to the comments to have this exact rant. Past tense is dragged. Do they not teach English in the USA?
100 rig checks wouldn’t have prevented this incident. Removing the ripcord snag Hazzard from the trailing edge of the exit door would prevent it. The factory rear door was removed for jumping BUT the upper aft door hinge was not removed and it snagged the reserve ripcord handle. We have a U206 at our skydiving center where I teach skydiving.
So who owes the pilot a new plane? Rig check, rig check, rig check! 2nd pair of eyes rig check, rig check rig check. Top to bottom, left to right. “Im ok?” “You ok, jump jump jump!”
Oh, and it was a nice plane too! Fast, quiet climber. I miss jumping from that plane
Jumper’s insurance, likely. Most dropzones require jumpers to have third party insurance.
I say plane owner responsible, for not removing hinge, creating hazzard! Not jumpers fault..
Well that is one of the more unusual ones. Glad no one was killed.