A change of course due to bad weather. According to what we learn, this is the last communication between the Pilatus PC12 pilot, who crashed yesterday in San Donato Milanese, and the Linate control tower from where the tourist aircraft carrying eight people, all dead, was just took off.
A phrase that would explain the “turn” with respect to the initial route. After take-off, the plane correctly traveled the route passing the Idroscalo and Segrate, then instead of continuing south towards Sardinia, it changed the route. which triggered the audio exchange with the control tower who asked for explanations. «I deviate slightly» due to bad weather the pilot’s request agreed with the control tower.
About three minutes after take-off (at 13.04 yesterday) from Linate the plane, which should have reached, after departure, a standard altitude (as indicated by the departure route) of 5 thousand feet, when it was at a height of around 3500-4000 feet, it continued to veer to the right in an anomalous way, as emerged from the tracks of the Linate radar control center, which deals with traffic in the skies of north-west Italy.
The intended route
When departing from Linate the planes all proceed north and then, if they have to go south (the Pilatus was headed for Olbia), they initially veer right for a while and then go south in a direction that passes over Piacenza.
In this case, however, the plane continued to turn right without going south. The radar room, noticing the anomaly, immediately contacted the Pilatus and the pilot, the Romanian tycoon Dan Petrescu, replied explaining that he was making a “deviation”, apparently he said something like “little deviation”, and subsequently asked for that too. which in technical jargon is called a “vector”, ie space and coordinates to return to the airport.
«Vector» which was immediately indicated by the radar room. The pilot, however, did not report what the problem was and therefore a specific alarm signal did not arrive from the plane. And no more communications arrived after the request of the “carrier”, but in the control room it was immediately understood that the Pilatus had requested the return, because evidently there was an emergency (such as a problem of bad weather or an engine failure ). So much so that the momentary block of traffic on Linate started from the same room as foreseen in these cases. Less than a minute after the last communications (between 30 and 60 seconds), the flight has disappeared from the radar track, as happens when a plane suddenly begins to crash.
The small plane crashed with the engine on fire, according to the images and the accounts of some witnesses. A “vertical fall” that did not even give the pilot time – the Romanian real estate tycoon Dan Petrescu, 67, owner of the aircraft – to launch the SOS at the control tower.
The investigations
Meanwhile, the investigators do not leave any leads unexplored to explain what happened yesterday. Not only a possible failure of the engine that catches fire before impact, but also checks on the maintenance front and on the latest maneuvers made by the pilot.
A dossier for a plane crash was opened on the accident by the Milan deputy Tiziana Siciliano and entrusted to prosecutors Mauro Clerici and Paolo Filippini. It was confirmed that no maintenance or refueling operations were carried out on the tourist aircraft that arrived at Linate airport on 30 September from Bucharest (Romania).
The investigators are at work on the black box, as well as on the footage acquired by fixed cameras or made by citizens and passers-by who witnessed the last moments of the flight. From the images, as well as from the dialogues between the control tower and the pilot, it will be possible to reconstruct what happened yesterday, around 1pm before the plane became a fireball – due to the burning engine – and crashed into a structure under renovation near the San Donato Milanese metro stop.
The altitude at which he was traveling is also being studied, as well as the speed he held in the last minutes before the crash.
Regarding the radio conversations acquired by the Tower of Linate airport, the Police Headquarters confirmed that “from the tapes it emerges that the pilot was contacted by the flight control due to a discrepancy in the route and to the question of the operators if he wanted to make a change of route he replied in the affirmative, agreeing on a new route, due to bad weather ».
The crash site manned by the police
The building that went up in flames yesterday is guarded by the police, who have isolated a part of the terminal with the bus and coach stops that have been moved a few hundred meters, in a roundabout adjacent to via Marignano. However, the pouring rain of the morning kept the onlookers away and at the nearby terminus of the yellow metro line everything is proceeding normally.