![]() ![]() “Ronnie Van Zant walked to the back of the plane to get a pillow, and as he walked forward, he shook my hand,” Pyle says. On his way back to the cabin, Pyle met Van Zant, and they grasped each other’s hands. Nothing like that had ever happened to him.” He was a good pilot, but he kind of freaked a little bit. “The pilot, Walter McCreary, turned around and looked at me and said, ‘Go back to the fuselage and strap yourself in,’ ” Pyle says. “I did the stewardess trip.” Then he went to the cockpit. “I told everybody to put out their cigarettes and turn out all the lights and bend over,” Pyle says. Pyle, who like Powell is a pilot, instructed the other passengers in the proper crash procedure. “Instead of panicking, everybody was sitting there praying.” ![]() “I was real proud of everybody,” Powell says. They hoped to belly- flop in a muddy field a few miles to the south. It was ridiculous for us to be on an old plane like that.”Īt 6:42 p.m., according to a National Transportation Safety Board investigation of the crash, the Convair’s flight crew radioed the Houston Air Traffic Control Center and reported the plane was low on fuel: “Yes, sir, we need to get to a airport, the closest airport you’ve got, sir.”īut they’d already flown over the closest airport, in McComb, Miss., and co-pilot William Gray told the 24 passengers to strap in, that the plane was running on empty and an emergency landing was imminent. “We had decided to get a Learjet for the band, a beautiful bus for the crew. ![]() “We had talked about that an hour before we went down,” Pyle remembers. The hardest-working band in America deserved better and was planning to switch planes a few days later in Dallas. The group decided the flight to Baton Rouge would be one of Skynyrd’s last in the 30-year-old aircraft. “When Collins got on, he was sitting there going, ‘Man, this ain’t right,’ ” Rossington adds. He said, ‘I’m not gonna get on it because it’s not right.’ And then Ronnie said, ‘Hey, if the Lord wants you to die on this plane, when it’s your time, it’s your time. The tragic Lynyrd Skynyrd plane crash is the subject of a documentary titled Street Survivors: The True Story of the Lynyrd Skynyrd Plane Crash, which premiered in February of 2020.“Allen was real upset,” his sidekick, guitarist Gary Rossington, says. The group have continued on in various lineups ever since. ![]() The tragic crash and its aftermath derailed Lynyrd Skynyrd's career for a decade, but the band reunited in 1987, with Ronnie Van Zant's younger brother Johnny joining Gary Rossington, Billy Powell, Leon Wilkeson, Pyle and guitarist Ed King - who had left the band two years before the crash - as their new lead singer. The original cover for Street Survivors depicted the members of Lynyrd Skynyrd engulfed in flames, and MCA subsequently recalled it out of respect for those who had died and their families. Drummer Artimus Pyle and two crew members managed to crawl from the wreckage of the aircraft and hiked through the woods until they waved down a local farmer, who sent for help. The other band members and members of the road crew suffered devastating injuries. Skynyrd lead singer Ronnie Van Zant died on impact, along with guitarist Steve Gaines, vocalist Cassie Gaines, assistant road manager Dean Kilpatrick, pilot Walter McCreary and co-pilot William Gray. The pilots tried to land on a small airstrip, but the bottom of the airplane clipped some trees, and the aircraft went down in a remote wooded area. Lynyrd Skynyrd were flying from Greenville, S.C., to Baton Rouge, La., on tour when their plane reportedly ran out of fuel toward the end of the flight. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |