ERA09LA344 · de Havilland DHC-6 TWIN
Skydive Factory de Havilland DHC-6 TWIN · Accident: low altitude operation/event while maneuvering
From Orange County Airport (OMH) to Orange County Airport (OMH)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's injuries. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA09LA344
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
de Havilland DHC-6 TWIN
- Aircraft type
- de Havilland DHC-6
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N204EH
- Operator
- Skydive Factory
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Orange County Airport (OMH), Orange, VATo Orange County Airport (OMH), Orange, VA
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Maneuvering · low-altitude flying
- Defining eventThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Low altitude operation/event
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- None
Cause areas
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that after the 20 skydivers left the airplane, he “descended and entered at a 45-degree angle for the downwind leg for landing on runway 08.” Once on the downwind leg of the traffic pattern, the pilot stated that the “windshield began fogging up.” The pilot decided to make a 360-degree turn to the right while he wiped the window with a rag. The pilot further stated that the last altitude he remembered being at was 2,000 feet mean sea level. Many of the skydivers had landed in a predetermined landing area, which was a field 0.25 nautical miles northwest of the runway. They reported that the airplane was conducting a “low-pass” about 30 feet above the ground when its propeller struck a descending skydiver’s parachute. The skydiver was seriously injured when he fell approximately 20 feet and struck the ground, but the airplane landed without incident. A few of the skydivers stated that the jump was a memorial exercise to release the ashes of a friend that recently died. They added that the airplane's low pass was part of the memorial exercise. The winds recorded at the airport about the time of the accident were calm. The pilot did not report any mechanical anomalies with the airplane.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper decision to perform a low-level maneuver over a populated skydive landing area and his inadequate visual lookout.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA09LA344
- Event ID
- 20090614X25335
- Case number
- ERA09LA344
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status, damage. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 3382255fd00e11cf94fc1ae8d53a05c78927b5ceb8cd7dcac08d65b28305ba0a; retrieved 2026-09-15T11:25:12.436Z.