Skydiving plane crash investigations often reveal poor maintenance and weak safety oversight

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Poor maintenance is often a factor when skydiving planes crash like one did in Missouri on Sunday, and the National Transportation Safety Board has said in past investigations that weak oversight of the skydiving industry can allow problems to go unnoticed.

It is far too soon to know what caused this weekend's crash that happened shortly after a plane took off from a small airport about an hour south of Kansas City. Twelve people died in the crash while some of their family members watched from the ground at Butler Memorial Airport. The NTSB will work to determine what happened over the next year or more before publishing its final report on the cause although the agency will release some preliminary details over the next month.

Just two years ago, another skydiving plane crashed near the same airport, but in that case everyone aboard was able to parachute to safety beforehand. The NTSB found that the handle for deploying a skydiver's emergency parachute got caught on something and sent him crashing into the plane’s horizontal stabilizer as he jumped, causing the crash.

Aviation safety expert Jeff Guzzetti said that too often, a skydiving crash investigation reveals lax maintenance and a weak safety culture. The Federal Aviation Administration rules that govern the industry can allow issues like these to fester because the safety standards for skydiving operations aren't as stringent as the rules for charter flight operators or airlines.

“These skydiving operations don’t have the best maintenance to make sure they’ve got airworthy airframes and engines because they don’t undergo the normal scrutiny that an air charter service does,” said Guzzetti, who used to be a crash investigator for both the NTSB and FAA.

The NTSB 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. In that crash, investigators found that the wing of the plane had been twisted during a previous incident several years earlier and had never been repaired. The FAA inspections that were done on the plane before the crash failed to spot the damaged left wing of the plane.

In a previous review of 32 skydiving accidents between 1980 and 2008, the NTSB found recurring shortcomings in the maintenance and inspections of aircraft and lax pilot training programs. But the FAA never took the recommended actions to strengthen the safety standards for skydiving companies.

The skydiving industry is proud of its safety record overall. Last year, just 16 civilians died while skydiving as 3.47 million skydives were completed nationwide, and most of those were the result of a simple human error, according to the United States Parachute Association.

That translates into a rate of 0.46 deaths per every 100,000 jumps. The annual number of skydiving deaths peaked in the late 1970s, and it has been declining slowly since then.

Sunday’s crash involved a single-engine turboprop Pacific Aerospace 750XL that is popular for skydiving because the nine seats in the back can be easily removed to clear the space for jumpers. The New Zealand-based company that makes these planes, NZAero, says the 750XL can take off and land in less than 800 feet (244 meters), and carry a load of more than 4,000 pounds (1,814 kilograms) even in hot conditions which make it more difficult to get airborne.

The 750XL is also certified to be operated by a single pilot. The plane that crashed Sunday was manufactured in 2010, according to FAA records.

It was operated by Skydive Kansas City, which is part of a group called Bucketlist Experience that promises on its website that it is “Helping Make Safe Skydivers” by helping people interesting in the sport master the basics of safety and technique, so they’ll be ready to enjoy the adrenaline rush that comes with “the exhilarating freedom of flying through the sky.”