The Lynyrd Skynyrd Plane Crash | 1
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The old days of air travel were quite risky. Compared to today, the chances of your flight going down were far greater. Every airport had kiosks and coin-operated vending machines where you could buy life insurance before you headed to the gate. You know, just in case you thought you weren't going to make it to your final destination. Today, the technology and regulations that keep planes safe in the air and on the ground is immeasurably better. But this came at great cost.

1977 was one of the worst years for accidents in aviation history. In addition to several violent hijackings every month, sometimes with fatal results, a passenger plane also crashed somewhere in the world with great loss of life. That included the 583 people who were killed when two 747s collided on a runway in the Canary Islands. That was the worst aviation disaster of all time.

Frank Sinatra's mother, the Prime Minister of Yugoslavia, and all but one member of the University of Evansville basketball team died in plane crashes. Then there were the events of October 20th, 1977, when a rickety chartered Convair prop plane went down in a swamp in Mississippi. On board were members of Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Six of the 24 passengers died, including singer Ronnie Van Zandt, guitarist Steve Gaines, backup singer Casey Gaines, and assistant road manager Dean Kilpatrick. Both pilots also died. What happened? Well, if you can believe it, the plane ran out of gas. How is that possible? Who is responsible? And why did no one ever go to jail? I'm Alan Cross, and have I got a story for you.

This is Uncharted, Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry, Episode 1, Death by Airplane, The Lynyrd Skynyrd Plane Crash. Three members of the country rock group Lynyrd Skynyrd were among six people killed when a twin-engine plane crashed in a southeastern Mississippi swamp. Authorities say it appears a pilot was trying to crash land the plane after running low on fuel but struck treetops near Macomb, Mississippi on the Louisiana border. ♪

Mr. Saturday Night Special Got a barrel that's blue and cold Musicians dying in plane crashes was tragically more common than it is today. The first seems to be bandleader Glenn Miller, when he was never seen again when his plane went down over the English Channel in 1944.

There was the infamous The Day the Music Died in 1959 that saw Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper, and Richie Valens die when their chartered single-engine aircraft went down in an Iowa cornfield. Patsy Cline, 1963. Jim Reeves, 1964. Otis Redding, 1967. Jim Croce, 1973.

Randy Rhodes, 1982. Stevie Ray Vaughan in 1990. John Denver's home-built experimental aircraft fell out of the sky in 1977. Aaliyah in 2001. Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker was the only survivor of a horrendous private jet crash in Columbia, South Carolina in 2008, an accident that killed his friend DJ A.M.

And then there's the story of Lynyrd Skynyrd on October 20th, 1977, when something went terribly wrong on a flight from Greenville, South Carolina to Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Frontman and co-founder Ronnie Van Zantz and guitarist and co-founder Steve Gaines were among the dead. The band, which had been on a legendary run, selling millions of records and concert tickets, was brought to a halt for a decade. The plane ran out of gas.

And the story behind this is crazy, tragic, and criminal. Yet no one was held to account, and no one went to jail. How could all this happen? The band that would become Lynyrd Skynyrd was formed in Jacksonville, Florida in 1964. For the rest of the decade, they worked the circuit in North Florida, playing schools and bars under a variety of names. My Backyard, Conquer the Worm, The Noble Five, and The One Percent.

Leonard Skinner, a riff on the name of a high school gym teacher who hated long hair on men, appeared sometime in late 1969. Al Cooper of Blood, Sweat & Tears was really impressed. He signed the band and put them in the studio. Their first album, pronounced Leonard Skinner in 1973, sold a million. The next sold two million. The third, another million. Same with the fourth. They were all over FM rock radio and even had a couple of top 40 hits.

Everyone had every right to believe that this rule could continue indefinitely. Southern Rock was at its peak, and Skinnerd was leading the pack. It wasn't all great, though. Gary Rossington, one of the founding members, was in a bad car accident over Labor Day weekend in September 1976. Too much alcohol and cocaine. Now, to be fair, almost everyone in the band was drinking heavily and using coke and heroin. Rossington was driving his brand new Ford Torino along Mandarin Road in Jacksonville,

but he passed out behind the wheel with his foot on the gas. He knocked down a telephone pole, careened off a big oak tree, and smashed into a house, causing thousands of dollars of damage. That same weekend, bandmate Alan Collins was in a crash of his own, bashing into a Volkswagen after his own drugs and alcohol bender. Leader Ronnie Van Zandt was so angry that not only were both guys fined $5,000, but he wrote a song about what happened. I quote,

I had a creepy feeling that things were going against us. So I thought I'd blow lines, slam some H, and write a morbid song. The lyrics spell everything out, and it was one of the last songs he ever wrote. Ronnie Van Zandt's creepy feeling would not go away.

Drummer Artemis Pyle recalls Ronnie telling him that he would never live to see 30 and would go out with his boots on. In other words, on the road. In April 1977, the group started to work on their fifth album, Street Survivors. Once they were done, as was their custom, the band went right from the studio to the road to plug the still unreleased record, playing 35 dates throughout the spring and summer before a six-week break.

The next leg of the tour began on October 13th in Statesboro, Georgia, and would eventually see the band realize their dreams by playing Madison Square Garden several weeks down the road. Street Survivors was released on the 17th and was immediately certified gold. And on October 19th, Leonard Skinner performed at the Greenville Memorial Auditorium in Greenville, South Carolina.

Along the way, Skinner chartered the use of a Convair 240, a twin-engine prop plane built in 1947. Registration number N55VM. It was owned by the L&J Company of Addison, Texas. It was a former commercial airliner with 29,000 flight hours. To say it had seen better days was an understatement, and the plane actually had quite the history. Skinner had a reputation of behaving badly on chartered aircraft.

There's a story that someone once tried to toss a roadie out of the cabin at 13,000 feet. The result was that few charter companies were willing to let Skinnerd hire their aircraft. The best band manager Peter Rudge could do was the Convair, which, by the way, had been offered to Aerosmith earlier that year. But they were so freaked out by the plane's poor condition, they said thanks, but no thanks. By the way, Rudge was also the manager of Aerosmith, so he was well aware of what they thought of the Convair.

And one more thing. Skinner had some luggage tags made up for their suitcases, and they all read Survivor's Tour. It also didn't help that one of Aerosmith's road managers saw Captain Walter McCurry and First Officer William Gray smoking up and passing around a bottle of Jack Daniels in the cockpit. But the price was right. Rudge managed to negotiate a deal where the band got the plane for three months for $5,000 a month, including crew.

The band was not happy. They knew the plane was junk. And they were unhappy that their manager insisted on doing things on the cheap. They thought that a band at their level should have a proper private jet, you know, just like Led Zeppelin. On October 18th, the band flew into Greenville from Lakeland, Florida. At one point, 10-foot flames shot out of the right engine at an altitude of 12,000 feet for several minutes.

The decision was made that once they made it to Baton Rouge on the 20th for a gig at Louisiana State University, they'd dump the conveyor for a brand new Learjet. But they had to make one more flight, a quick 600-mile trip to Baton Rouge. The flight crew maintained that it would be completely safe. The plane's owner said things would be fine, but agreed to send a mechanic from their headquarters in Dallas to Baton Rouge to inspect everything. Why didn't they send the mechanic to Greenville? There are stories that they just couldn't afford it.

The state of the plane did not sit well with everyone associated with the band. Keyboardist Billy Powell remembers his wife begging him not to get on the plane. Cassie Gaines, sister of Steve, wanted to ride with the band's equipment truck but was persuaded to fly. Gary Rosington was scared out of his mind too. And the night before, backup singer Jojo Billingsley had a dream that the plane crashed. The call to take the flight was ultimately Ronnie's, and he was completely calm.

When Gary asked him why he wasn't worried, he replied, "Hey, if the Lord wants you to die on this plane, when it's your time, it's your time." Let's go, man. We got a gig to do. The Convair took off from Greenville at 5:02 Eastern Time with 22 passengers and Captain McCurry and First Officer Gray at the controls. They climbed to a cruising altitude of 12,000 feet. Flight time to Baton Rouge was scheduled for about three hours.

On board was five and a half hours worth of fuel. Some passengers played poker, others were drinking and partying, celebrating the fact that this would be their final flight on this horrible old Convair. Ronnie was curled up with a pillow on the floor towards the front of the cabin, trying to get some sleep. Normally, Ronnie would stretch out near the back, but backup singer Leslie Hawkins was giving people massages in Ronnie's usual spot. Ronnie was exhausted from the night before and just wanted to sleep.

He'd popped a couple of sleeping pills, so the noise of the plane and the poker and the partying wouldn't be an issue. Around halfway through the trip, at 6:40 p.m., the right engine, which didn't sound good to begin with, sputtered and then died. McCreary and Gray took a look at the fuel gauges. They'd filled up in Greensville, so why was the plane so low on gas so soon? At 6:42 p.m., McCreary contacted Houston Air Route Traffic Control. "We need to get to an airport, the closest airport you've got, sir."

He was given a course to Macomb Pike County Airport in Macomb, Mississippi, which was about 17 kilometers to the northeast, which was behind them. Before McCrory could turn the plane around, the left engine died. Hydraulics and steering were inoperative. The plane, now at 4,500 feet, was in freefall. All you could hear was the sound of the wind whipping over the fuselage. McCrory turned to his passengers. "We're out of gas," he said.

put your head between your legs in the crash position and buckle up tight. Drummer Artemis Pyle, who had his pilot's license and who had lost his father in a plane crash, knew exactly what was happening. Some people remember security chief Gene Odom yelling, "I hope you two sons of bitches live through this so I can kill you both." There was little anyone can do. The plane glided without fuel or power for 10 minutes. It was eerily quiet.

Ronnie was still unfazed. He got out from his spot in the aisle, found himself another pillow, walked back to the front of the cabin, and laid down. No seatbelt. Pyle remembers, "He shook my hand. We looked at each other and smiled, and he continued forward and sat down." Ronnie knew that he was going to die. Or maybe not. Remember, he'd taken some heavy-duty sleeping pills. He might not have been completely aware of what was happening.

Meanwhile, the pilots were looking for a place to set down. They were not going to make the diversion airport. Could they find a stretch of highway? Nothing available. What about that open field? That seemed like the only choice. But they didn't make it. What happened next was sheer, unimaginable horror.

At 6:52 p.m., the Convair 240 carrying Lynyrd Skynyrd and a big chunk of their crew descended into a forest close to the Mississippi-Louisiana border, 60 miles from Baton Rouge. Baton Rouge should have been just 10 minutes away, but the plane was out of gas and out of control.

A farmer who was about five miles from the crash site remembers hearing something weird. My wife and I were out sitting in our backyard and we heard this plane come over which it sounded like it was running on one engine. And then all of a sudden I heard that engine go out. For 15 solid seconds, the plane cut a 500-foot swath through the pines with three-foot trunks at an airspeed of about 200 miles an hour. Because the pilots were trying to make the open pasture, the landing gear was down.

But when it caught the trees, the plane was pulled violently towards the ground. The plane split into three pieces. The cockpit and the tail were ripped away. The remaining fuselage was bent into an L-shape. At 6:53 p.m., the plane finally came to a stop in a snake-infested mangrove swamp. It was pitch dark. There was no fire because there was no fuel on board. Every single seat was ripped from the floor, taking those passengers belted in with them and thrown forward.

The pilots, McCreary and Gray, still strapped in their seats, were dead, hanging upside down from a tree. Ronnie Van Zant, who had been at the front of the cabin, died of a single blunt force trauma to the head. Not only was he thrown forward in the crash, but all the seats and all the debris from the back of the cabin landed on top of him. Steve Gaines was killed on impact, as was Assistant Road Manager Dean Kilpatrick. Cassie Gaines didn't die immediately, but she bled out before anyone could give her help.

Those who weren't killed were badly injured. Guitarist Allan Collins broke two vertebrae on his neck. His right arm was cut so badly that it nearly had to be amputated. Gary Rossington suffered two broken arms, two broken legs, two broken wrists, two broken ankles, a punctured stomach, a punctured liver, and injuries to his pelvis.

Bass player Leon Wilkinson had a double fracture of his left leg, a compound fracture to his left arm, six broken ribs, a punctured lung, severe facial damage and the loss of 15 teeth. He also suffered massive internal injuries. Before the night was over, his heart would stop twice. He later recounted that he dreamed spending time on a cloud-shaped log talking with Ronnie Van Zant and Dwayne Allman of the Allman Brothers, who had died in a motorcycle crash six years earlier. He said,

"Ronnie told me, 'Boy, get yourself out of here. It's not your time yet.'" Keyboardist Billy Powell crashed headfirst through a table, nearly having his nose ripped off as well as a broken right knee. Two members of a TV crew following the band were found in a tree. They were hurt, but okay. Artemis Pyle had shattered ribs, a few of which were actually sticking out of his body. But as a former Marine, he was determined to get help.

He waded through a creek, crawled under a barbed wire fence, and stumbled through a herd of cattle before encountering 22-year-old dairy farmer Johnny Mote. Mote had heard the crash but thought it was just a vehicle on a nearby gravel road. Then he saw the helicopter circling. That made him think that police were looking for some escaped convicts from the local prison camp. Mote found Pyle, along with sound engineer Ken Pedin and roadie Mark Frank, firing a shotgun into the air to warn these "convicts"

to stay away and that he meant business. The three guys hit the dirt thinking that they were going to be shot. Then they explained what was really happening. Mote then leapt into action, calling the neighbors who set out into the bush with pickups and four-wheel RVs. Rescue vehicles tried to make their way to the crash site, but they had problems with thick forest and that creek. The wreckage was at least a quarter mile from the nearest road. Two bulldozers were brought in to create some sort of path

It took hours for police, the Coast Guard and local EMS personnel to rescue the injured and to remove the dead. Identifying everyone was difficult because remember, at the time of the crash, many of the passengers were playing poker. They'd had their wallets out and they'd been scattered everywhere into the swamp. News of the crash spread fast. - The Korean ran out of gas and crashed in Mississippi last night, killing the leader and two other members of the popular rock group, Lyonard Skynyrd. Bob Brown has more.

Record industry spokesman said this was one of the top five rock groups in the country, Leonard Skinner. Its latest album, Street Survivors, had already gone gold after its release this week. The group took its name from a teacher who expelled three of the musicians from a Florida high school ten years ago for wearing long hair.

Three members of the group, including its leader, Ronnie Van Zandt, were among the six people killed in this crash. Some of the 20 survivors said several members of the group had argued against taking the plane. They were going to vote on whether to continue flying in it after a concert tonight. Investigators said the plane ran out of gas and crashed 200 yards short of where the pilot had hoped to set it down. Although several members of the group survived, a spokesman said the van will never play again under its old name. Bob Brown, ABC News.

In a morbid spectacle, about 3,000 people descended on the crash site. A few wanted to help, using pocket knives and hatchets to get at the wreckage and the survivors. The rest were looters. They grabbed whatever they could from the crash site: banned merch, suitcases, hunks of metal, airplane seats, pillows, seat belts, even wallets, purses, and cash.

Security Chief Gene Odom was lying on the ground, injured and bleeding. His neck was broken, and he was suffering from burns from a de-icing phosphorus flare that went off, blinding him in one eye. He later reported, They took my watch, my wallet, my ring, and my money. There were 20 survivors, all of whom required years of healing and rehab. Most were transported to the Southwest Regional Medical Center in Macomb, Mississippi. Over 30 doctors were called in.

The hospital was so overwhelmed that they had to use the lobby to treat the injured. The high school gym became the morgue. Others were taken to the hospital in Jackson, Mississippi. Peter Rudge, the manager, charted three planes so people could fly in to identify the bodies. So what happened? How did a plane carrying one of the biggest bands in America at the time run out of gas and crash into a swamp? We honestly don't know.

First of all, a plane of that vintage wasn't required to have a flight data recorder on board. The wreck was too severe for proper reconstruction. And then there were all those looting vultures who descended on the wreck to grab whatever they could, which was evidence, of course.

The National Transportation Safety Board looked into things, and eight months later, in June 1978, it ruled that the probable cause of the accident was "fuel exhaustion and a total loss of power from both engines due to crew inattention to fuel supply." The crew was either negligent or ignorant of the increased fuel consumption because they failed to monitor adequately the engine instruments for fuel flow and fuel quantity.

In other words, the plane ran out of gas because the pilots didn't pay attention to the fuel load. This had been exacerbated by the troublesome right engine, the one that was seen shooting out 12-foot flames. It was running on auto-rich mode. It was getting too much fuel, hence the flames. This, apparently, because there was a bagged magneto in the starboard engine, and the only way to get the thing to start was to give it more fuel than normal.

There was talk of landing in Macomb, Mississippi to let the engine cool, but a fatal decision was made to continue with the flight. Baton Rouge was just 10 minutes away, and a refueling stop would take at least 45. One of the pilots reportedly tried to transfer fuel to the dead right engine, but may have instead accidentally dumped all the remaining gas from the left engine. How could the pilots be so unaware of something so critical as fuel?

One concern floated by the survivors is that the pilots had been drinking and doing drugs the night before, or maybe even during the flight. But those accusations were nullified by toxicology reports. No one on the ground at the group's last stop at Greenville were ever implicated. The fuel gauge in the cockpit wasn't working, and the only way to check on fuel load was to go out to the wing tanks with a dipstick.

Apparently, no one thought to check before the plane left Greenville, although there was considerable time spent, about 45 minutes or so, trying to get the fuel mixture correct as everyone waited in the heat. The pilots thought they had more than five hours of fuel on board. But then there's that right engine, which was using way more fuel than it should have. Plus, the fuel mixture on the Convair couldn't be adjusted for each engine independently. Both engines, therefore, had to run rich.

Five hours of fuel dwindled to less than three. The pilots had failed to take that extra consumption into account. Gary Rosington later gave an interview: "There's a million maybes and ifs and should haves, but what happened has already happened. Didn't matter what caused it. It was unfortunate, but it happened. And after the fact to learn why, it really doesn't do anything to you." Artemis Pyle says the band itself was responsible.

"There were a lot of people on the plane that knew something was wrong," he said. "But we all kind of followed each other, and that's where we made our mistake." The funerals began a week later. Steve and Cassie Gaines were buried in Orange Park, Florida. They remained there for 23 years until their graves were vandalized. Some idiots disturbed the casket and a bag of his ashes, so he and Cassie were moved to a more secure location. Their original tombs in Jacksonville Memory Gardens remain as empty memorials.

Road manager Dean Kilpatrick's grave is in Jacksonville, Florida. And Ronnie Van Zant? He was also late to rest in Jacksonville, in his favorite black hat with his favorite fishing pole. His funeral was attended by about 150 people, including many Southern rockers. Charlie Daniels read a poem he'd written. A brief candle, both ends burning. An endless mile, a bus wheel turning. A friend to share the lonesome times. A handshake and a sip of wine.

So say it loud and let it ring that we're all part of everything. The present, future, and past. Fly on, proud bird. You're free at last. Back with more to Sumthings Up in just a moment. There was one last piece of business before Lynyrd Skynyrd was put to rest for a while.

The cover of the new album Street Survivors featured the band Surrounded by Flames. Teresa Gaines, Steve's widow, asked that MCA Records withdraw that version. It was reissued and the band appears on a plain black cover. Lynyrd Skynyrd would remain absent from music for the next 10 years and not everybody would be around for the reunion.

Alan Collins managed to recover from his crash injuries and joined Gary Rossington, Billy Powell, and Leon Wilkeson to form the Rossington-Collins Band. That would later split into the Rossington Band and the Alan Collins Band. But then Alan Collins' wife died of a hemorrhage resulting from a miscarriage. That sent him spiraling deeper into addiction. And then on January 26, 1986, he was driving his brand new Ford Thunderbird when he crashed into a ditch. He was drunk.

The accident killed his girlfriend. Collins was paralyzed from the waist down. He died on January 30, 1990, of pneumonia, which was related to his paralysis. He was only 37. Billy Powell joined a Christian rock band called Vision, and then there was the Artemis Pyle Band. A reunion of Lynyrd Skynyrd did happen in 1987, featuring crash survivors Gary Rosington, Leon Wilkinson, Billy Powell, and Artemis Pyle.

Guitarist Ed King was brought back, and Johnny Van Zant, Ronnie's younger brother, was drafted in as lead singer. This did not go down well with everyone. The widow of Ronnie and Steve sued, saying that a prolonged reunion violated the terms of a deal struck in the late 1970s that no one would exploit the Lynyrd Skynyrd name. The group ended up handing over 30% of all their touring revenue. Meanwhile, the tragedies piled up. Leon Wilkerson developed chronic liver and lung disease.

He died in his sleep at a Florida beach resort on July 27, 2001. Billy Powell died of a heart attack in 2009. Ed King also had severe cardiac problems, and he had a successful heart transplant, but he was later filled by cancer on August 22, 2018. Original drummer Bob Burns died on April 3, 2015, when he misguided a sharp curve and crashed into a mailbox in a tree in Carterville, Georgia.

Gary Rossington had a heart attack on October 8, 2015, followed by emergency surgery in 2021. He died at his home on March 5, 2023. There is a version of Skinner out there today, but with zero original members. This wasn't supposed to happen. An agreement with Ronnie's widow stipulated that Skinner could not continue unless there were three original members. But that rule was waived in 2001.

By the way, the band did make good on that canceled show at Louisiana State University. About 100 people who hung on to their tickets for the gig on October 21, 1977, were able to see the band play 14 years later. When Leonard Skinner's junkie chartered plane went down in that swamp, they were on a trajectory to be one of the biggest bands in the world. How big could they have become?

We'll never know. People still make trips to the crash site, starting on Mississippi Highway 568 just east of Macomb, turning onto Easley Road. Johnny Mote's dairy farm is now the Hung Yen Chicken Farm. You can visit the crash site, but there's no sight of what happened on that day in 1977. Meanwhile, thankfully, the number of plane crashes since then has declined drastically. And that includes musicians who have died this way.

The last big name to die in a small plane crash was Aaliyah, the singer and actress. That was a twin-engine Cessna in the Bahamas in 2001. There have been, by my count, only three musician deaths and crashes since then, and both were on commercial flights that went down. Melanie Thornton of the group La Bouche died in a crash of a cross-airplane in Switzerland in 2001. And in 2009, two members of Chuck Mangione's band were killed in a commuter plane crash outside of Buffalo.

Meanwhile, the Skinner legacy will always include one of the most tragic ends in rock history. If you have any questions or comments, shoot me an email, alan at alancross.ca. We can meet up on all the usual social media sites along with my website, ajournalofmusicalthings.com. It's updated with music news and recommendations every day. And there's the free daily newsletter you should get. Join me next time for more stories of crime and mayhem from the world of music. Technical Productions by Rob Johnston. I'm Alan Cross.