Jenkinsburg air accident
Air Carriers Express Services Cessna 208 · The Jenkinsburg aviation accident occurred on 29 September 1985
From West Wind Sports/Parachute Center, Jenkinsburg, Georgia, United States to West Wind Sports/Parachute Center, Jenkinsburg, Georgia, United States
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL85MA286
- 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
- Event fatalities
- 17 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- Occupants
- Unknown
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Cessna 208
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 208
- 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
- N551CC
- Operator
- Air Carriers Express Services
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From West Wind Sports/Parachute Center, Jenkinsburg, Georgia, United StatesTo West Wind Sports/Parachute Center, Jenkinsburg, Georgia, United States
- 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
- Initial climb
- First occurrenceThe 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
- Total loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Fuel contamination; Stall
- 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
- Company/operator management › Maintenance, service of aircraft/equipment, improper
- Company/operator management › Operation with known deficiencies in equipment, performed
- Fluid, fuel › Contamination
- Fluid, fuel › Water
- Pilot in command › Airspeed, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Spiral, inadvertent
- Pilot in command › Stall, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
From the Wikipedia article
The Jenkinsburg aviation accident occurred on 29 September 1985. On that day a Cessna 208 Caravan aircraft fully loaded with parachutists crashed after taking off from Jenkinsburg airfield in the US state of Georgia due to an engine failure, killing all 17 occupants on board. It was the first known incident involving a Cessna with fatalities. As of May 2020 it is the accident of a Cessna 208 with the most fatalities.
Accident sequence
The aircraft took off from Jenkinsburg on a parachute jump flight. At a height of 300 feet the engine's power dropped and the Cessna rolled sharply to the left, entered a spin with its nose pointing steeply downwards and crashed to the ground. All 17 occupants of the aircraft were killed.
After the crash
After the aircraft crashed, passers-by rushed to the wreckage of the aircraft, but found all the occupants already dead. The bodies of the crash victims were piled on top of one another and had to be cut out of the wreckage by the fire brigade for recovery.
Investigation and cause
Cause
It turned out that the fuel in the tanks was heavily contaminated. It was mixed with water and there were foreign bodies in it that looked like brown algae. A milky substance was found in the fuel control unit, which in a laboratory examination turned out to be a mixture consisting of 65 percent aviation fuel and 34 percent water, which also contained iron contaminants. There was a dark, thread-like substance in the fuel filters. The aircraft had been refuelled from 55-gallon drums containing contaminated fuel. The drums were stored upright and rainwater was able to enter through the filler caps.
Fuel contamination had repeatedly been found on the aircraft in operation in the past. On these occasions the fuel bypass warning light had occasionally illuminated. According to reports, the circuit breaker of the stall warning system had been deactivated on some flights so as not to alarm the parachutists. Whether this had also been the case on the accident flight could not be determined, as the position of the circuit breaker before impact could no longer be established due to the high degree of destruction.
The aircraft's maximum take-off weight had been exceeded by 168 kg and the weight distribution was nose-heavy.
All the parachutists had their parachutes strapped on.
Translated into English with AI assistance from the German Wikipedia article “Flugunfall bei Jenkinsburg” (revision 261513266, retrieved 2026-09-19) by its authors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Extracted as plain text: references, tables, images and some sections are left out; the translation may contain errors, and long articles were cut to their first 700 words. Read the article
NTSB narrative
AS THE PLT & 16 JUMPERS DEPTD ON A SKYDIVING FLT, THE ENG LOST PWR AT APRX 300' AGL. THE ACFT THEN BANKED STEEPLY LEFT, SPIRALED IN A STEEP NOSE DWN ATTITUDE & CRASHED. AN EXAM REVEALED FUEL IN THE TANKS WAS CONTAMINATED WITH WTR & FOREIGN MATERIAL WITH THE APPEARANCE OF BROWN ALGAE. MILKY FLUID (APRX 65% JET FUEL & 34% WTR) WAS FND IN THE ENG FUEL CONTROL, AS WELL AS IRON CONTAMINANTS. DARK STRINGY MATERIAL WAS FND IN THE FUEL FILTERS. THE ACFT HAD BEEN REFUELED FM 55 GAL DRUMS WHICH CONTAINED CONTAMINATED FUEL. THE DRUMS WERE STORED UPRIGHT & RAIN WATER COULD LEAK THRU THE FILLER CAPS. N551CC HAD A HISTORY OF FUEL CONTAMINATION WHICH ON OCCASIONS CAUSED THE FUEL BYPASS INDICATOR TO DISPLAY. RPRTDLY, THE STALL WARNING CIRCUIT BRKR HAD BEEN DISENGAGED ON OTHER OCCASIONS, SO AS NOT TO STARTLE THE JUMPERS; HOWEVER, DUE TO DMG, ITS PREIMPACT PSN COULD NOT BE VERIFIED. ACFT WAS ESTD TO BE 370 LBS OVR ITS MAX WT LMT & 1' FWD OF THE CG LMT. THE9 PAX SEATS HAD BEEN RMVD TO HAUL UP TO 18 JUMPERS. PAX SEAT BELTS WERE NOT USED. LACK OF FAA SURVEILLANCE WAS NOTED.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
German Wikipedia article: Flugunfall bei Jenkinsburg
- Article
- Flugunfall bei Jenkinsburg
- Translation
- Into English with AI assistance; names of linked operators and aircraft types from Wikidata. It may contain errors.
- Revision
- 261513266 · 2025-11-13 · retrieved 2026-09-19
- Wikidata
- Q93990374
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record ATL85MA286
- Event ID
- 20001214X37718
- Case number
- ATL85MA286
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Where each value comes from
- Record
- de Wikipedia article "Flugunfall bei Jenkinsburg" (page 11262473, revision 261513266), translated into English with AI assistance; merged with NTSB case ATL85MA286 (events / aircraft)
- Date
- NTSB record ATL85MA286: events.ev_date
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site; country from NTSB record ATL85MA286
- Map position
- NTSB record ATL85MA286: events decimal coordinates
- Aircraft, operator and route
- NTSB record ATL85MA286: aircraft; gaps from Wikipedia infobox: aircraft type, registration, operator, origin and destination; route airports from the linked airport articles' Wikidata codes (OurAirports)
- Operation
- NTSB record ATL85MA286: operated under Part 91: General Aviation
- Fatalities
- Wikipedia: Wikipedia infobox: aircraft fatalities (the NTSB record states no total)
- Ground fatalities
- NTSB record ATL85MA286: events.inj_f_grnd
- Summary
- Wikipedia article lead
Source notes (2)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "Jenkinsburg air accident" and NTSB case ATL85MA286, matched by the same aircraft registration and date. For this US event the NTSB's values are used where the two differ; each value names its source.
- The date is the UTC date the NTSB stores; the local date may be a day earlier.