2019 Umeå GippsAero GA8 Airvan crash
Skydive Umeå GippsAero GA8 Airvan · Structural failure following departure from controlled flight
From Umeå Airport (UME) to Umeå Airport
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA19WA420
- 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
- Unknown · led by another country; figures from NTSB notifications
- Event fatalities
- 9 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- Occupants
- 9
- Survivors
- 0
- InjuriesFatal: death within 30 days. Serious: over 48 hours in hospital within a week, most broken bones, severe bleeding, nerve or organ damage, or serious burns. Minor: anything less. Glossary
- 0 serious · 0 minor (NTSB)
- 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
- Not recorded
GippsAero GA8 Airvan
- Aircraft type
- Gippsaero GA8
- 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
- SE-MES
- Operator
- Skydive Umeå
- Onboard fatalities
- 9
- Route
- From Umeå Airport (UME)To Umeå Airport
- 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
- Non-U.S., Non-Commercial
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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 oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Experience/knowledge
- Personnel issues › Task performance
- Organizational issues › Development
From the investigation findings the Wikipedia article reports, sorted into the NTSB's cause areas with AI assistance.
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
From the Wikipedia article
On 14 July 2019, a GippsAero GA8 Airvan crashed on a river islet in Sweden, killing all nine people on board. Structural failure of a wing is suspected as the cause of the accident. Consequently, the GippsAero GA8 Airvan was grounded by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) in Australia, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAANZ) in New Zealand and the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) in the European Union.
The grounding order was issued on 20 July and was due to run until 3 August, but was lifted early as CASA found there was no evidence for an unsafe condition, and the EASA said the wrecked aircraft had been exposed to aerodynamic loads beyond the limits specified in the type-certification basis.
Accident
At 13:33 local time on 14 July 2019, the aircraft took off from Umeå Airport with the pilot and eight parachutists on board. A radio report was made that aircraft was at an altitude of 4000 m, and the parachutists were ready to jump, but the aircraft crashed shortly after 14:00 on Storsandskär, an islet in the Ume River adjacent to Umeå Airport; all on board were killed. Witnesses reported that some of the parachutists tried to jump from the aircraft before it crashed. The Bothnia Line was consequently closed, but reopened at 18:30. The descent of the aircraft was filmed by a local inhabitant. The accident is the deadliest involving the GA8 Airvan.
On 19 July, EASA issued an Emergency Airworthiness Directive prohibiting the operation of the GippsAero GA8 Airvan in European Union airspace, effective 20 July until further notice. CASA also prohibited operation of the aircraft in Australian airspace effective 20 July for 15 days, but with an option to extend the timescale. On 20 July, the CAANZ suspended the airworthiness certificates of all GippsAero GA8 Airvan aircraft operating in New Zealand. CASA and EASA lifted the grounding order on 25 July.
Investigation and cause
Investigation
The Swedish Accident Investigation Authority (Statens haverikommission, SHK) opened an investigation into the accident. Investigators from the SHK arrived on Storsandskär on 15 July, and on 16 July it was announced that the wreckage would be moved to the SHK's headquarters for further investigation. One avenue of investigation is the structural failure of a wing in flight.
A preliminary report was released on 18 September 2019. This report does not make any final conclusion but noted that the aircraft did dive very quickly and disintegrated in air.
The final report was issued on 9 September, 2020. This report concluded that, approximately 30 seconds before the parachutists were due to jump, the aircraft stalled and subsequently entered cloud in a rapid and accelerating descent. Lack of pilot experience and loss of visual cues precluded a subsequent recovery to controlled flight. Excessive loads experienced during the uncontrolled descent led to the break-up of the aircraft.
SHK calculated that the aircraft was probably overweight at takeoff with a centre of gravity (cg) aft of the permitted limit and noted that normal preparations for a parachuting run would have been expected to cause the cg to shift further aft at a time coincident with the stall. The resultant loss of longitudinal stability, combined with already low and decreasing airspeed at a time of high pilot workload probably led to the departure from controlled flight.
The report observed that:
No mass and balance calculations had been carried out prior to the accident flight, and that parachuting operators in Sweden had no means of performing such calculations routinely.
Although legally qualified to operate the flight, the pilot was inexperienced in parachuting operations and that there was no formal training mechanism available for the development and qualification of jump pilots
Parachutists were generally unaware of the importance of respecting mass and balance limits and the accident aircraft carried no markings or notices to enable them to comply with these limits.
Corresponding recommendations to the European Aviation Safety Agency and the Swedish Transport Agency were made.
Text from the Wikipedia article “2019 Umeå GippsAero GA8 Airvan crash” (revision 1375112224, retrieved 2026-09-18) by its authors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Extracted as plain text: references, tables, images and some sections are left out. Read the article
NTSB narrative
The government of Sweden has notified the NTSB of an accident involving a AIRvan GA8 airplane that occurred on July 14, 2019. The NTSB has appointed a U.S. Accredited Representative to assist the government of Sweden's investigation under the provisions of ICAO Annex 13.All investigative information will be released by the government of Sweden.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
Wikipedia article: 2019 Umeå GippsAero GA8 Airvan crash
- Revision
- 1375112224 · 2026-09-15 · retrieved 2026-09-18
- Wikidata
- Q65563181
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record GAA19WA420
- Event ID
- 20190716X13403
- Case number
- GAA19WA420
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Where each value comes from
- Record
- Wikipedia article "2019 Umeå GippsAero GA8 Airvan crash" (page 61317707, revision 1375112224); merged with NTSB case GAA19WA420 (events / aircraft)
- Date
- Wikipedia infobox: date
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site
- Map position
- NTSB record GAA19WA420: NTSB API eventLatitude/eventLongitude
- Aircraft, operator and route
- Wikipedia infobox: aircraft type, registration, operator, origin and destination; route airports from the linked airport articles' Wikidata codes (OurAirports); gaps and aircraft details from NTSB record GAA19WA420
- Operation
- Reviewed correction (2026-09-26): A skydiving club's Airvan climbing to drop eight parachutists: a parachute-club flight, which is general aviation. The article: "the aircraft took off from Umeå Airport with the pilot and eight parachutists on board"
- Fatalities
- Wikipedia: Wikipedia infobox: aircraft fatalities
- Ground fatalities
- Wikipedia: not stated in the Wikipedia infobox
- Summary
- Wikipedia infobox: summary
Source notes (2)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "2019 Umeå GippsAero GA8 Airvan crash" and NTSB case GAA19WA420, matched by the same aircraft registration and date. For this event outside the United States Wikipedia's values are used where the two differ; each value names its source.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.