Skydiving plane flips upside down in vineyard

A skydiving plane carrying 17 people landed upside down in a vineyard near a parachuting center in San Joaquin County, but no passengers were hurt, emergency responders said.

The pilot suffered a “minor injury,” according to a Federal Aviation Administration spokesman. A skydiving center official described it as a bloody nose.

The crash occurred Thursday at about 2 p.m. in a field just east of Highway 99 between Galt and Lodi. Denton Armstrong of American Medical Response, a first responder company out of Stockton, said no one was transported to hospitals.

“We made it on scene and the aircraft was upside down in a field,” he said. “It was a confirmed crash. We didn’t transport anybody. Our ambulance and fire department has left.”

A Federal Aviation Administration spokesman said the plane was a single-engine Cessna 208. The plane experienced engine trouble right after taking off, and the pilot tried to return to the airport but may have clipped a car on approach, spokesman Ian Gregor wrote in an email.

The crash occurred near the Lodi Airport, which has a skydiving center. William Dause, who operates the skydiving center, said the plane, however, flipped over when it clipped a grapevine wire on approach. “The wires caused it to flip on its back,” he said.

Dause said the pilot suffered a bloody nose.

The Cessna plane is owned by Flanagan Enterprises Inc, a company in Zephyr Cove, Nevada, according to the aviation administration’s registry. The registry also shows that the company owns about 12 planes. Dause of the Lodi center said he rents the plane from Flanagan Enterprises.

A plane owned by Flanagan Enterprises and operated by a company called Skydive Salt Lake was involved in a crash that killed nine people in 2001 in Utah, according to National Transportation Safety Board records. The records indicate the group was returning from a skydiving trip. The plane crashed into water while descending over the Great Salt Lake near Lake Point, Utah.

This story was originally published May 12, 2016 at 7:38 PM with the headline "Skydiving plane flips upside down in vineyard."