A Smooth Take Off That Would Soon Make History
There were 26 people on that fateful flight. Two of them were crew members, pilot Walter McReary and co-pilot William Gray, the rest were band members and roadies. At the beginning of the flight, all was well, amid high tensions. Everyone on the flight, except for Ronnie Van Zant, was feeling uneasy and restless. The reason is that just a few short days before some of the band members had reported seeing sparks a large as 10ft shooting out of the right engine.
The flight was going good so far and other than Ronnie getting severely intoxicated while on the flight, all seemed to be setting up to be another routine flight. A little after the two-hour mark, however, events started to unfold that would soon make history. Marc Frank, a 24-year-old roadie traveling with the band, noticed what seemed to be fuel spewing from the right engine. Without wanting to cause alarm he thought to himself that maybe the pilots were trying to transfer fuel from one engine to another.
Soon after the plane would begin to jerk and shake violently. That’s when most of the sober members of the band saw that the right propeller was no longer working. Terror soon engulfed the cabin of the plane and the pilots were frantically trying to radio local Houston Air Traffic Control, stating they had a fuel issue and were most likely going to have to make a emergency landing. As soon as it seemed that the worst of the flight was passing, the true nightmare was about to set in for Lynyrd Skynyrd and the crew aboard.