CEN24LA197 · Cessna U206 C
Cessna U206 C · Accident: aircraft/propeller/rotor contact with person during an uncontrolled descent
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN24LA197
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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
Cessna U206 C
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 206
- 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
- N29173
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 56 years (built 1968)
- 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
- Uncontrolled descent
- 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
- Aircraft/propeller/rotor contact with person
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft structures
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that during a skydiving flight, the first jumper scraped his emergency parachute handle while moving toward the jump door. The jumper’s emergency parachute deployed out of the airplane and subsequently drug him into the horizontal stabilizer. The pilot stated that he heard a loud “bang” and focused on maintaining control of the airplane. After the remaining jumpers exited the airplane, the nose of the airplane “dropped straight down.” The pilot was able to release his seat restraints, open a cargo door and exit the airplane. The pilot noticed the airplane’s empennage was bent as it spiraled into a field. The pilot opened his emergency parachute and landed safely with the other jumpers. The first jumper sustained serious injuries. The airplane was destroyed when it impacted a field near the departure airport. The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. According to the first jumper, his D-ring style emergency parachute handle (Figure 1) was unknowingly caught on something. While he was positioning himself to the aft door, still unaware of the handle being caught, the ripcord was pulled about 4 inches causing the emergency parachute to deploy and subsequently pulled him into the airplane’s empennage.
Figure 1. Emergency parachute deployment handle (circled in red)
Probable cause
The jumper’s unintentional deployment of his emergency parachute and subsequent impact with the airplane’s horizontal stabilizer.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN24LA197
- Event ID
- 20240528194327
- Case number
- CEN24LA197
- 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, coordinates, cause areas. 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: f7dfdf211ae34ab90253c59f5254ac7a09b76c6f86c0de44fcc28849c4dfdda2; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:48:34.361Z.