Deadly crash revives longstanding debate over regulation of skydiving planes

By Andy Rose, Alexandra Skores, CNN

(CNN) — After personally looking over the wreckage of the deadliest skydiving plane crash of the decade on a bright June day, Jennifer Homendy with the National Transportation Safety Board said things must change.

That crash was in 2019 in Mokuleia, Hawaii, claiming 11 lives.
Homendy – then a board member – is now chair of the NTSB. But when it comes to how skydiving flights are regulated by the Federal Aviation Administration, very little has changed in the seven years between then and the crash of a single-engine plane carrying 12 people over the weekend, killing all on board shortly after takeoff.

“Paying passengers should be able to count on an airworthy plane, an adequately trained pilot, a safe operator and adequate federal oversight of those operations,” Homendy said.

Sunday’s accident in Butler, Missouri, was the deadliest crash of a skydiving plane since the twin-engine aircraft went down in Mokuleia, according to the United States Parachute Association, which licenses and rates skydiving instructors as well as serving as a lobbying group for the sport.

The NTSB typically issues a preliminary report about its investigation within 30 days. A final report could take up to two years.

Hawaii crash raised concern about pilot training

In the 2019 crash, the pilot and 10 passengers died after the plane rolled in midair and went down shortly after takeoff, with no radar or radio contact to air traffic control and starting takeoff near the middle of the runway instead of using the entire length available.

The probable cause of the crash “was the pilot’s aggressive takeoff maneuver, which resulted in an accelerated stall and subsequent loss of control at an altitude that was too low for recovery,” according to a report from the NTSB.

Their investigation raised serious questions about the pilot’s preparation, finding he had received specialized flight instruction with the company organizing the jump, Oahu Parachute Center, for only one hour over a 2-day period prior to the accident.

A former pilot with the center told investigators, “The company’s only direction for training was to teach new pilots how to start the engines, taxi the airplane, take off, fly the jump run, and land the airplane, after which the new pilots would be ‘good to go.’”

“They go up, they go down. They go up, they go down. They get as many jumps as the weather and daylight permit.”

“Sometimes it’s 12 to 15 in a day,” said attorney Gary Robb, whose law firm Robb and Robb specializes in aviation accidents.

The NTSB also raised concerns about failing to use the full length of the runway in what is called a short field takeoff. Investigators suggested the pilot may have felt the need to get back in the air quickly because of time constraints for popular “sunset flights.”

“The pilot might have perceived pressure to take off quickly so that he could return to the airport in time for the last scheduled flight (and the third sunset flight) of the day,” the accident report said.

The Hawaii Department of Transportation said the center was not properly licensed by the state to operate skydiving activities, and the state shut the business down just days after the crash.

After the crash, the NTSB asked the FAA to take stronger steps with inspectors to identify flight instructors with poor records of passing students, but the FAA declined, saying the recommendations were “unnecessary.” The NTSB characterized it as an “unacceptable response.”

Skydiving faces less regulation than most aviation businesses

Skydiving planes are regulated under a section of FAA rules known as Part 91. The section mostly applies to noncommercial flights that do not carry passengers or cargo for money, but skydiving flights are given an exception. Companies conducting air jumps face more regulations than private pilots flying a typical plane, but those requirements have more to do with the proper handling of skydiving equipment rather than flying the plane itself.

“It’s not the danger inherent to skydiving,” said Robb, the attorney who represented victims of a fatal 2006 skydiving plane crash in Sullivan, Missouri, about 200 miles east of where Sunday’s crash happened. “Skydiving operations, in terms of the quality of the aircraft and the piloting, has been under scrutiny because they’re subject to the most lax regulations of the Federal Aviation Administration.”

After a special investigation into skydiving safety concerns, the NTSB made a formal recommendation to the FAA in 2008 that Part 91 regulations were not good enough for parachuting operations.

“They do not ensure that parachute jump operations pilots are proficient in the specific aircraft in which they fly passengers, and they do not adequately address the unique considerations for performing parachute operations flights,” the board wrote to the FAA.

The administration denied the request, saying accident rates for skydiving planes are lower than those for other types of private flights, a point the United States Parachute Association has emphasized repeatedly in the years since then, lobbying against stricter rules.

At a Monday news conference, NTSB Vice Chairman Michael Graham spoke about the report and a separate report on revenue passenger-carrying operations, including skydiving, conducted in 2021. He said the “biggest thing” investigators flagged was to treat skydiving operations “just a little bit differently.”

“When you jump on an airliner, you expect a certain amount of safety,” Graham told CNN. “… Any passenger-paying operation should be afforded the same safety as that, and so what we’re looking for is the same airworthiness coverage on (skydiving operations), operational guidance and regulations.”

“It’s always frustrating when we see things that maybe the FAA hasn’t acted on with some of our recommendations, and then we continue to see accidents in those arenas,” he said.

The United States Parachute Association says the number of fatalities from skydiving has been on a slow decline since the 1970s, with the average number of annual fatalities dropping from more than 40 in that decade to 20.7 in the 2010s, with most of them being people who were hurt in dives.
Except for the 2019 accident in Hawaii, this is the first year of this century with double-digit fatalities resulting from a skydiving plane crash, the association says.

Jeff Guzzetti is a former NTSB investigator and former director of the accident investigation division for the FAA. He said some of the recommendations the NTSB has given the FAA for Part 91 operators could still be in the process of being “worked on.”

“It takes a long time for the FAA to work through the bureaucracy and justify new rules that could cause businesses to go out of business,” said Guzzetti, who now is president of his own aviation consultancy. “The FAA is trying to balance its use of its resources with aviation safety and these small skydiving operations, as well as local air tour operations and historical flight operations … they do not have to meet the same rigorous FAA rules as air charters or airlines.”

He said while such accidents draw more attention to the problems with Part 91 operators, investigators may need to deem FAA oversight as a probable cause in the crash to initiate changes. He said he is not sure whether FAA oversight was a factor in the Missouri incident.

“It’s a balancing act for the FAA,” Guzzetti said. “The NTSB is all about safety, but the FAA has to consider the proliferation of aviation operations and their right to have a business and to operate, and rulemaking requires justification, and sometimes it’s very difficult for the FAA to justify to lawmakers why they need to impart regulation.”

Fewer maintenance inspections are required

In addition to pilot error in the Hawaii crash in 2019, the NTSB also cited a “twisted left wing” from a previous accident involving the same aircraft, which was not properly repaired. It “likely caused the left wing to stall before the right wing and precipitated the airplane’s roll to the left,” the agency said.

With fewer inspections required for skydiving planes than most commercial aviation, Robb argues the temptation is great for operators to use substandard equipment or make shoddy repairs.

In his firm’s lawsuits in the 2006 Sullivan, Missouri, crash, a supplier of aftermarket parts used in the doomed aircraft ultimately agreed to pay $52.5 million to the families of the victims after a jury found the company sold propeller blades it should have known were defective.

“They used inexpensive parts, and it caused the failure in that case,” said Robb.

NTSB says skydiving flights can be safer

Parachuting is, of course, known to be a very dangerous sport, and facilities typically require an extensive liability release before taking anyone up in the place. But the NTSB says it is not enough to take legal responsibility off the shoulders of operators.

“Even though parachutists assume a level of risk while participating in parachute jump activities, parachutists are airplane passengers during the taxi, takeoff, and climb phases of flight and should thus be assured of a reasonable level of safety, including adequate FAA surveillance of parachute jump operations,” the NTSB report on the 2019 Hawaii crash says.

“That would have saved lives if we had done this two decades ago,” said Robb. “And they still haven’t done it. My big hope is that perhaps this Butler incident will be the impetus.”

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CNN’s Chris Boyette contributed to this report.