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TRAGEDY struck the beloved rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd when a plane carrying some of its members crashed on the Louisiana-Mississippi border.
Multiple people lost their lives as a result, including leading singer and founder, Ronnie Van Zant.
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Who died in the Lynyrd Skynyrd plane crash?
There were 26 people on board Lynyrd Skynyrd’s small Convair CV-240 passenger plane when it crashed.
Of the 26 passengers, 20 survived.
Those who died included:
- Lead singer and founder Ronnie Van Zant
- Guitarist Steve Gaines
- Backup singer, and Gaines’ sister, Cassie Gaines
- Assistant Road Manager Dean Kilpatrick
- Pilot Walter McCreary
- Co-pilot William Gray
“The crash took away one of the great American musicians,” Gene Odom, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s security manager, and one of the survivors, told Fox News Digital.
“It took from me a lifelong dear friend and fishing buddy.”
The band had boarded the plane in Greenville, South Carolina, after performing at the Greenville Memorial Auditorium and were headed for Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
When was the Lynyrd Skynyrd plane crash?
After the crash happened, an investigation was conducted by the National Transportation Safety Board.
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The organization determined that the cause was due to “crew inattention to fuel supply,” according to Forbes.
“…The probable cause of this accident was fuel exhaustion and total loss of power from both engines due to crew inattention to fuel supply,” investigators said.
“Contributing to the fuel exhaustion were inadequate flight planning and an engine malfunction of undetermined nature in the right engine which resulted in higher-than-normal fuel consumption.”
The plane took off from Greenville on October 20, 1977, and then ran out of fuel at about 10,000 feet, causing the crash.
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Are any of the Lynyrd Skynyrd members still alive?
Lynyrd Skynyrd was formed in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1964 and was comprised of Ronnie Van Zant, Gary Rossington, Allen Collins, Larry Junstrom, and Bob Burns, all of whom have since passed away.
Less than a decade after the plane crash took the life of Van Zant, Collins was involved in a car accident in 1986 that claimed the life of his girlfriend, Debra Jean Watts, and left him paralyzed from the waist down.
Collins died four years later at the age of 37 from chronic pneumonia, which was a complication of the paralysis.
Burns then died in 2015 at the age of 64 after sustaining injuries in a car accident, and Junstrom died in 2019 at the age of 70 after battling a brain tumor.
Rossington was the last member to go. He passed away in 2023 at the age of 71 from an unknown cause.
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