Martin Falbisoner / Wikimedia Commons
Why It Matters
A fatal plane crash in Butler, Missouri has brought renewed urgency to a long-running dispute between federal aviation safety investigators and regulators over how skydiving aircraft are overseen. With 12 people killed, the crash is the deadliest involving a skydiving plane in the United States since a 2019 disaster in Hawaii — and critics say the federal government has known for decades that current rules fall short.
What Happened
A single-engine skydiving aircraft went down Sunday near Butler, Missouri, killing all 12 people aboard. Investigators are in the early stages of determining a cause, with a preliminary report expected within 30 days and a final report potentially taking up to two years.
The disaster drew immediate comparisons to a June 2019 crash in Mokuleia, Hawaii, where a skydiving plane carrying 11 people also went down with no survivors. That earlier crash killed 11 and was the previous benchmark for single-incident skydiving plane fatalities in the country. Missouri has seen tragedy before in this space — a fatal skydiving plane crash also occurred in Sullivan, Missouri in 2006, roughly 200 miles east of where Sunday’s wreck happened.
A Regulatory Gap Years in the Making
Skydiving planes currently operate under FAA Part 91, the regulatory framework governing noncommercial flights. Safety investigators have argued for nearly two decades that those rules are inadequate for aircraft carrying paying passengers on jump operations.
The National Transportation Safety Board formally recommended in 2008 that the FAA upgrade oversight standards for parachuting operations, citing Part 91 as insufficient. The FAA denied that request. Following the 2019 Hawaii crash, the NTSB again pressed the FAA to take stronger inspection steps — and the FAA again declined, characterizing the recommendations as unnecessary. The NTSB publicly called that response “unacceptable.”
The 2019 Hawaii crash exposed a range of safety failures. The pilot had received just one hour of specialized flight instruction over a two-day period before the accident. During the fatal flight, he performed an aggressive takeoff maneuver that resulted in an accelerated stall and loss of aircraft control. He also failed to use the full runway length available for departure. Adding to the concern, the operating company — Oahu Parachute Center — was found to lack proper licensing from the Hawaii Department of Transportation and was shut down within days of the disaster.
By the Numbers
- 12 — people killed in Sunday’s Butler, Missouri crash
- 11 — lives lost in the 2019 Mokuleia, Hawaii crash
- 1 hour — specialized flight training the 2019 Hawaii pilot received over a two-day period
- 12 to 15 — typical number of jumps per day at a standard skydiving operation
- 2008 — year NTSB first formally recommended stronger FAA oversight of skydiving planes
Safety Advocates Speak Out
NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy, who inspected the wreckage of the 2019 Hawaii crash as a board member at the time, has been outspoken about the need for consistent safety standards across passenger-carrying aviation. “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,” she said.
Aviation safety advocate Michael Graham echoed that concern, arguing that the standard applied to commercial airline passengers should extend to anyone paying to board an aircraft. “When you jump on an airliner, you expect a certain amount of safety,” Graham said. “Any passenger-paying operation should be afforded the same safety.”
What’s Next
The NTSB has previously conducted a broad special investigation into skydiving safety as well as a 2021 report examining revenue passenger-carrying operations, which included jump plane activity. Whether Sunday’s crash in Missouri accelerates pressure on the FAA to revisit Part 91 regulations remains to be seen, but safety advocates are already calling for action.
The FAA’s repeated reluctance to act on NTSB recommendations — combined with a second mass-casualty skydiving crash in the same state where a fatal 2006 incident occurred — is likely to intensify congressional and public scrutiny of how the agency oversees an industry that has seen fatality rates decline since the 1970s but continues to face serious questions about regulatory adequacy.
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