A skydiving plane crashed and caught fire in Missouri on Saturday, June 14, killing the pilot and all 11 others aboard, authorities confirmed. No survivors were reported.
Twelve dead. The aircraft went down during what officials described as a skydiving outing — the exact circumstances of the crash weren’t immediately available, and investigators hadn’t publicly identified a cause as of Saturday evening.
The crash
Authorities didn’t release the names of those killed, the location of the crash site within Missouri, or the type of aircraft involved. What they confirmed: the plane caught fire after going down, and everyone on board — the pilot and 11 passengers — died at the scene.
Skydiving operations typically use aircraft modified to carry multiple jumpers, with doors removed or altered for exits at altitude. Whether the plane had departed a commercial skydiving facility or a private airstrip wasn’t specified by authorities.
The National Transportation Safety Board, which investigates civil aviation accidents in the United States, hadn’t issued a public statement on the crash as of Saturday evening. It’s standard for NTSB investigations into fatal crashes to take months before a probable cause is determined.
Twelve fatalities in a single general aviation accident is among the deadliest such incidents in recent years — though authorities hadn’t characterized it that way in their initial statements.
Who the victims were, where they were from, and which skydiving operation they’d booked through hadn’t been released Saturday.
Originally reported by NPR. Read the original report.
