A private plane carrying eleven skydivers and a pilot crashed in a field near Butler, Missouri, on Sunday morning, killing all twelve people aboard. The aircraft, operated by Skydive Kansas City, went down shortly after departing Butler Memorial Airport at around 11:30 a.m. local time, coming to rest in a grass field near Business 49 Highway before being engulfed in flames. Among those who witnessed the crash were family members of the victims.
Butler is a small town of approximately 4,300 people located roughly 65 miles (105 kilometres) south of Kansas City. The plane involved was a Pacific Aerospace 750XL, a single-engine turboprop built in 2010 that is widely used in skydiving operations due to its ability to carry heavy loads and take off from short runways. According to Dennis Jacobs, the acting airport manager and Bates County Emergency Management Agency director, the plane had just taken off and begun a left turn when trouble began. "In my opinion, I think it was losing power, and he was trying to make it over to the highway and land, and he stalled and went down nose first and caught fire," Jacobs said. Emergency responders extinguished the blaze shortly after the crash. First responders also swept the area beneath the flight path and found no indication that anyone had attempted to jump from the plane before it came down.
Flight tracking data from FlightAware showed the aircraft had already completed two flights earlier that same Sunday, with additional flights logged on Friday and Saturday. The Federal Aviation Administration confirmed the crash and said it would investigate alongside the National Transportation Safety Board, which will lead the inquiry. Bates County Sheriff Chad Anderson stated that the incident "appears to be an accident" and that the public is not at risk.
The crash has renewed scrutiny of safety standards in the skydiving industry. Aviation safety expert Jeff Guzzetti, a former crash investigator for both the NTSB and FAA, noted that skydiving operators are subject only to the same regulations as private aircraft owners — significantly less stringent than those governing charter operators or commercial airlines. "There's been a whole history of skydiving accidents for inadequate maintenance and deficient safety culture," Guzzetti said. The NTSB has raised similar concerns before, including after a 2019 crash in Hawaii that killed eleven people, when the agency concluded that the FAA's regulatory framework was insufficient to ensure the safety of skydiving flights. A final determination of the cause of Sunday's crash is not expected for a year or more.