Aerosmith Was Interested In The Same Plane And Crew As Lynyrd Skynyrd At The Time
Aerosmith’s band management at the time was looking at a Convair CV-240. The plane was produced from 1947-1954. It was going to be the replacement for Douglas C3’s with a pressurized cabin that was then just being mandated as a rule for commercial airlines. A small plane with 40 seats and two props the plane was anything but extraordinary. The plane had a thinner fuselage and smaller wingspan than any of its kind at the time. A design that would most likely lead to the infamous crash.
Aerosmith’s management passed on the opportunity to call this plane their own. Although Steven Tyler and Joe Perry had insisted that they charter the plane, ultimately it was not signed to the band. According to the band’s autobiography, Zunk Buker, Aerosmith’s chief of flight operations manager, was inspecting the plane and the crew before they pulled the trigger. Buker had noticed the flight crew passing around liquor bottles while aboard the plane. These combinations of poorly built aircraft and less than acceptable crew quickly led to the dismissal of the band leasing out their services.
Lynyrd Skynyrd did not plan on keeping the plane for long. As they, too, were succumbing to the sub-par standards of the plane and crew. Artimus Pyle once said they were flying in a plane that he believed belonged to the Clampett family (they were the family from the Beverly Hillbillies, a family notorious for using pieced together equipment.). The band decided that once they had landed in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, they would acquire a Learjet to replace the severely outdated 30-year-old plane. Sadly, the band would not make it to Baton Rouge and the plane had been pushed one flight too many.