Where did lynyrd skynyrd plane crash6/26/2023 ![]() It occurred a few miles outside of Gillsburg, Miss., a blink-and- you’ll-miss-it crossroads just north of the Mississippi-Louisiana line. The estimated time of the crash, according to the NTSB report, was 6:52 p.m. ![]() ![]() It felt like being rolled down a hill in a garbage can and being hit by about a hundred baseball bats at the same time. “The crash itself only lasted about 15 seconds at the most. “I remember we started clipping those pine trees, and I heard a real loud cracking noise,” Powell says. As it sliced its way through the timber, the plane cut a 500-foot path. The Convair came down at a 5-degree angle that grew steeper after the initial impact with the treetops. I can’t describe the feeling that was going through me, knowing that I was fixing to die.” “I was going, ‘We’re fixing to die, man.’ I said, ‘God, please don’t take my life.’. It was as if he were standing on a gallows, waiting to hear the executioner’s song. Johnson joked that this would be his last “low-budget tour.” Powell prayed that it wouldn’t.Īlmost 10 minutes elapsed from the first warning until the eventual crash, Powell says. Powell buckled in next to production manager Clayton Johnson. Of the six, only Rossington and Collins would survive. Across from them, in facing seats, were Gaines, his sister and Kilpatrick. Van Zant took a seat between Collins and Rossington. “We looked at each other and smiled, and he continued forward and sat down. “Ronnie Van Zant walked to the back of the plane to get a pillow, and as he walked forward, he shook my hand,” Pyle says. On his way back to the cabin, Pyle met Van Zant, and they grasped each other’s hands. Nothing like that had ever happened to him.” He was a good pilot, but he kind of freaked a little bit. “The pilot, Walter McCreary, turned around and looked at me and said, ‘Go back to the fuselage and strap yourself in,’ ” Pyle says. “I did the stewardess trip.” Then he went to the cockpit. “I told everybody to put out their cigarettes and turn out all the lights and bend over,” Pyle says. Pyle, who like Powell is a pilot, instructed the other passengers in the proper crash procedure. “Instead of panicking, everybody was sitting there praying.” “I was real proud of everybody,” Powell says. They hoped to belly- flop in a muddy field a few miles to the south. It was ridiculous for us to be on an old plane like that.”Īt 6:42 p.m., according to a National Transportation Safety Board investigation of the crash, the Convair’s flight crew radioed the Houston Air Traffic Control Center and reported the plane was low on fuel: “Yes, sir, we need to get to a airport, the closest airport you’ve got, sir.”īut they’d already flown over the closest airport, in McComb, Miss., and co-pilot William Gray told the 24 passengers to strap in, that the plane was running on empty and an emergency landing was imminent. “We had decided to get a Learjet for the band, a beautiful bus for the crew. “We had talked about that an hour before we went down,” Pyle remembers. The hardest-working band in America deserved better and was planning to switch planes a few days later in Dallas. The group decided the flight to Baton Rouge would be one of Skynyrd’s last in the 30-year-old aircraft. “When Collins got on, he was sitting there going, ‘Man, this ain’t right,’ ” Rossington adds. He said, ‘I’m not gonna get on it because it’s not right.’ And then Ronnie said, ‘Hey, if the Lord wants you to die on this plane, when it’s your time, it’s your time. “Allen was real upset,” his sidekick, guitarist Gary Rossington, says.
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