Crash

On October 20, 1977, three days after the release of Street Survivors, Lynyrd Skynyrd's chartered Convair CV-240 ran out of fuel near the end of the flight from Greenville, South Carolina, where they had performed at the Greenville Memorial Auditorium, to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where they were to play at LSU.

The pilots attempted an emergency landing on a small airstrip, but the plane crashed in a forest near Gillsburg, Mississippi. Lead singer/founding member Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist/vocalist Steve Gaines, assistant road manager Dean Kilpatrick, pilot Walter McCreary, and co-pilot William Gray all died on impact, and backing vocalist Cassie Gaines (Steve's older sister) bled to death at the site.

Keyboardist Billy Powell's nose was nearly torn off as he suffered severe facial lacerations (as well as deep lacerations to his right knee). He later caused a controversy by giving a lurid account of Cassie Gaines' final moments on a VH1 Behind The Music special about the band, saying that the backup singer's throat was cut from ear to ear and that she bled to death in his arms. Powell also said that Van Zant's head had been smashed. Powell's version of the events has been disputed by both Artimus Pyle and Judy Van Zant Jenness, who posted the autopsy reports on the band's web site in early 1998 in order to "set the record straight", while essentially confirming Powell's account.

The third member of The Honkettes, JoJo Billingsley, was not on the plane; she was home sick and planned to join the tour in Little Rock, Arkansas, on October 23. Billingsley said that she had dreamed of the plane crash and begged guitarist/founding member Allen Collins by telephone not to continue using the Convair.

The Convair CV-240 had been inspected by members of Aerosmith's flight crew for possible use earlier in 1977, but was rejected because it was felt that neither the plane nor the crew were up to standards. Aerosmith's assistant chief of flight operations Zunk Buker tells of seeing pilots McCreary and Gray passing a bottle of Jack Daniel's back and forth while he and his father were inspecting the plane. Aerosmith's touring family was also relieved because the band, specifically Steven Tyler and Joe Perry, had been trying to pressure their management into renting that specific plane.

On the American Top 40 show of February 25, 1978, Casey Kasem reported that musical act LeBlanc & Carr had been bumped from the ill-fated flight. The bands were touring together, and last-minute travel plan changes prevented the duo from boarding the plane after they had initially been offered seats.

The Drive-By Truckers song "Shut Up And Get On The Plane" references the plane crash. Some of the other songs on the album also reference Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Cause

Powell, among others, spoke of seeing flames shooting out of the right engine on a trip just prior to the accident. Cassie Gaines was reportedly so fearful of flying in the Convair that she offered to ride in the band's equipment truck instead, but Ronnie Van Zant talked her onto the airplane on October 20.

Pyle maintains in the Howard Stern interview that the fuel gauge in the older-model plane malfunctioned and the pilots had failed to manually check the tanks before taking off. In his book Lynyrd Skynyrd: Remembering the Free Birds of Southern Rock, Gene Odom makes an accusation that co-pilot William Gray was impaired because he had spent part of the previous night snorting cocaine; the toxicology reports from both pilots' autopsies had found them to be clean for alcohol and other drugs.

After the accident, the NTSB removed, inspected, and tested the right engine's magneto and found it to be operating normally, concluding "No mechanical or electrical discrepancies were found during the examination of the right magneto." The inspection also found that "All of the fuel crossfeed and fuel dump valves were in the closed position."