Federal investigators do not expect to find a voice recorder in the wreckage of a skydiving plane that crashed Sunday in Missouri on Sunday, but are searching for the personal electronic devices of the 12 people who died.
Michael Graham, the vice chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, said in a media briefing on Monday that the small aircraft that crashed is not required to have a cockpit recorder, commonly known as a black box.
“This is the beginning of a long process, and we will not be determining what happened overnight,” he said, adding that a preliminary report into the cause of the crash would be produced within 30 days.
The accident killed 11 passengers and the pilot just moments after they took off in Butler, about 60 miles south of Kansas City, Mo. The aircraft was manufactured in 2010 by Pacific Aerospace and registered to SkiHi Aero in Jasper, Tenn.
Investigators from the N.T.SB. were arriving in Missouri on Monday to investigate the crash of the plane, operated by Skydive Kansas City. Witnesses described the plane going up in flames with all of its occupants inside in a field near the runway at Butler Memorial Airport.
The wreckage is expected to be removed on Tuesday and taken away for analysis, Mr. Graham said. He asked that bystanders who saw the crash or have photos or videos to contact the agency.
Jerret Reno, coroner of Bates County, Mo., said in an interview on Monday that the victims were still being identified, which would probably continue until next week.
In the small city of Butler, investigators gathered at the scene of the crash on Monday.
Nearby are farm supply and lumber stores, a closed glass company, a Russell Stover Chocolate warehouse, as well as a water tower whose faded paint mirrored this week’s clear blue skies. The road next to the crash debris was closed as investigators analyzed the scene, and reporters gathered beside a youth baseball field, where the right field fence had advertisements for a laundromat and the Butler Bears, a school mascot.
Tributes to the victims continued to pour in on Monday, as relatives and friends confronted their sudden loss.
One victim, Michael Shanahan, 54, began skydiving a few months before his sister died of breast cancer in 2016, his family said. The pursuit was partly in her honor, said his mother, Gloria Shanahan, and partly because “he wanted to make sure he lived his life to the full extent.”
“We didn’t know he only had 10 years,” Ms. Shanahan said.
Steve Birch, the owner of the Furniture Exchange in Bloomington, Ind., said another victim, Dustin McKinney, had worked for him before moving to the Kansas City area.
“He was just loved by everybody, and he loved everybody,” Mr. Birch said. “He was nonjudgmental and one of the easiest people that I’ve ever worked with.”
The crash on Sunday, under sunny skies, immediately raised questions about safety rules for private aircraft used for skydiving and other recreation.
Nearly two decades ago, the N.T.S.B. was sounding the alarm over what it described as inadequate regulations. Between 1980 and 2008, an N.T.S.B. report said, 172 people died in parachute aircraft accidents, an average of about six a year.
Parachutists “are aware of and manage” the risks of skydiving itself, the 2008 report said, but “can do little or nothing to control” aircraft hazards.
The N.T.S.B. noted that the Federal Aviation Administration’s maintenance and training rules for parachute operations are more lax than those that govern some charter flights and sightseeing tours.
The report said that in 12 parachute plane accidents that involved a loss of engine power, “nearly all” the pilots had made critical errors, often letting the plane stall. The board also noted that parachute pilots can satisfy training requirements by flying in a small, two-seat plane, even if they are regularly flying parachuters in a much larger, 23-seat plane.
In 2019, after 11 people died in a skydiving plane crash in Hawaii, the N.T.S.B. voiced its frustrations with the F.A.A. for not tightening regulations.
“Are we trying to put the F.A.A. on notice on this? Yes,” Jennifer Homendy, who now leads the N.T.S.B., said at the time.
In 2021, the N.T.S.B. again called on the F.A.A. to regulate parachute flights more rigorously, saying that skydivers “are likely unaware that these operations have less stringent requirements.”
Gloria Shanahan said that Michael Shanahan and his sister, who was older by 19 months, were close. He visited her grave regularly, his mother said. Every now and then, he went skydiving.
Mr. Shanahan’s mother said he had been devoted to his son, daughter-in-law and six grandchildren — his “whole self revolved around those kids,” she said.
“This time around has knocked us down,” Ms. Shanahan said. “It’s not going to be easy to get back up, if we do at all. We will just go through the motions of life. The emotions, and the motions of life. The grandchildren and the great-grandchildren will help us survive it.”
Kitty Bennett and Georgia Gee contributed research.
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