On This Date: The Plane Carrying Legendary Southern Rock Band Lynyrd Skynyrd Crashes In Mississippi In 1977
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Lynyrd Skynyrd played a show in Greenville, South Carolina on October 20, 1977, and then boarded a chartered plane to Baton Rouge for a show at LSU the next day.
It was supposed to be the band's last flight in their Convair CV-240, which drummer Artimus Pyle would later say "looked like it belonged to the Clampett family" from The Beverly Hillbillies. In Baton Rouge,
Lynyrd Skynyrd would be upgrading to a Learjet one that would better reflect their status as one of the top rock bands in the world.
En route to Louisiana, the plane ran out of fuel near the end of the flight over Mississippi. The pilots attempted to reach McComb Airport, but soon realized that they wouldn't make it and decided to attempt an emergency landing in an open field.
As the plane went down, it skimmed the tops of some trees, eventually slamming into a large tree and breaking apart.
Killed in the crash were lead singer Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines and his sister who sang background vocals for the band, Cassie Gaines, along with the band's assistant road manager, the pilot and co-pilot. The rest of the band survived, but were severely injured.
An NTSB investigation would find that the plane's pilots failed to check the fuel tanks before leaving Greenville, and the fuel gauges on that type of plane were known to malfunction.
