A skydiving plane makes an emergency landing today at the Colorado Springs East Airport near Ellicott after an engine failure and the divers are forced to bail early.
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Out of the Blue Skydiving’s two propeller King Air B-90 lost function from one of the engines while it was still ascending over the eastern El Paso County skies. all thirteen passengers on board are experienced skydivers and waited for the green light. The company is based out of the Colorado Springs East Airport, a small airport near Calhan, Colorado; that’s where the plane had just taken off from.
Officials believe it may have started when a bird got into the engine.
“While the bird (s) that our plane struck and ingested in flight didn’t fare well, all 13 skydivers on that load and our pilot are safe and sound”, the company said.
Deputies said no one was injured in the incident. They were a father celebrating his 60th birthday and his son.
The cause of the engine fire wasn’t clear.
The pilot radioed in the emergency at about 1:45 p.m.
He was with the father and was the last out of the plane.
The pilot made a successful landing on the airport’s runway.
Kendra Boysen, co-owner of Out of the Blue, said in a telephone interview that typically the optimum altitude for skydivers to parachute out of a plane is about 12,000 feet (3,658 meters).
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All 11 jumpers landed safely in an area outside of their normal landing zone, so it took them a while to figure out what road to go to for crews to find them and pick them up.
