The plane crash at Milan-Linate airportwhich occurred at 8:10 am on October 8, 2001, was the most serious ever to happen in Italy considering the number of victims, which stands at 118 including 4 SEA employees e only one survivora baggage handler. The tragedy was caused by the impact during take-off between two planes: a private aircraft Cessna Citation CJ2 headed for Paris, which ran onto the tarmac of an airliner McDonnell Douglas MD-87 of Scandinavian Airlines (flight SK686) headed to Copenhagen. If we talk about collisions during take-off, the only accident in the history of aviation to have caused more victims was the Tenerife disaster in 1977, in which 583 people died. Among the causes of the disaster there was a thick fog, the wear of the signs on the asphalt of the runways, the lack of monitoring instruments such as radar and incursion sensors, but also human errors by the crew of the private plane and the control tower including violation of airport traffic rules. Following the accident, new rules and procedures were introduced nationwide to increase airport safety in the event of poor visibility.
Linate accident, what happened: the reconstruction of the disaster and the causes
The planes involved in the disaster are both at Milan-Linate airport at 6:59 of 8 October 2001, when the private German plane Cessna Citation landed on runway 36R with 4 people on board including the president of Star, Luca Fossati. Meanwhile, the Scandinavian MD-87 was on the airport’s nearby north apron, scheduled to take off at 8:16 am. The first ones are already starting here anomaliessince the visibility was that morning less than 200 meters due to thick fog, while the Cessna was not authorized to operate with visibility lower than 550 meters. In other words, the plane should not have been there. Once landed, however, the Cessna clears the runway and moves to the western apron of the airport.
At 7:54 flight SK686 obtains authorization to taxi towards the runway, passing from the south. At 8:05 the Cessna is authorized to taxi from the west apron to the north apron passing from the north, i.e. via the R5 junction. The aircraft should have communicated with the control tower immediately before reaching the extension of the main runway.
If the private plane had correctly followed the control tower’s instructions, October 8, 2001 would have been a morning like many others at Linate airport. There horizontal road markings on the asphalthowever, was very worn and the signs to distinguish the R5 junction from the R6 junction (which instead leads directly to the main runway) were largely faded and no longer up to standard. To this must be added the poor visibility due to the thick fog that morning. Result: the Cessna pilot mistakenly takes the R6 junction instead of the R5 junction. Distinguishing a 5 from a 6 on a faded writing in thick fog is not at all easy.
What makes the situation worse is the fact that in the R6 junction there are no indications that could make the Cessna pilot aware of having taken the wrong road. Not even the flight controllers notice the malpositioning of the private plane, due to the fog and above all the fact that neither the runway incursion sensors nor the ground radars are operational at that time.
The Cessna thus proceeds with taxiing until waiting point S4 in the R6 junction, and communicates its position to the control tower. This particular stopping point, however, is not present in the airport maps available to the controllers, who therefore cannot deduce the error committed by the Citation pilot. In this case the controller concludes that the acronym S4 is a reading error by the pilot, probably due to the fog, and gives authorization to continue. In short: no one, neither at the control tower nor inside the plane, knows that the Cessna is entering the main runway directly instead of the north apron.
They are the 8:09 and while the Cessna gets clearance to proceed, the Scandinavian Airlines MD-87 is also cleared to take off from runway 36R. At that point the tragedy is inevitable: while the MD-87 regularly travels along the runway intent on taking off at a speed of approximately 270 km/hwith the nose already raised from the runway, at 8:10 the Cessna emerges from the R6 junction and intercepts him in full. For both drivers it is impossible to avoid the collision. Also given the difference in size between the two aircraft (the Cessna is a small private jet, while the MD-87 is close to 40 meters in length), the private plane leaves it broken into three partsand its four passengers die instantly.
The MD-87 sees its right engine detached and loses part of its main landing gear. However, he tries to lift himself off the ground, managing to do so until he reaches a height of 12 meters above the ground, but several fragments of the Cessna end up in the left engine causing a loss of power which after a few seconds brings the plane back to the ground. The aircraft is almost out of control, but the pilot Joakim Gustafsson attempts to govern it by bringing the engines to idle and activating the brakes and thrust reversers. Unfortunately the plane is too damaged, and even this attempt to maintain control doesn’t work. The MD-87 proceeds to 257 km/h beyond the runway and hits the baggage hangar located at the end of the extension on the R5 connection.
Ultimately, the accident was caused by a combination of poor visibility due to bad weather, non-compliant and inadequate road markings, human errors on the part of the Cessna crew and flight controllers, the non-operation of the control devices , the conscious violation of airport traffic rules by the private flight, and the lack of timeliness in interventions.
In the 2008the Supreme Court confirms the final sentence for five top management of ENAV (the company that provides the air traffic control service), the air traffic controller and two managers of SEA (the company that manages Linate airport).
The death toll
The crash kills 110 people on board the plane; other 4 they die due to the fire that broke out following the impact as well as 4 victims who were in the baggage storage room at the time of the crash. Unfortunately none of the occupants of the two aircraft survived the tragedy; the only survivor is Pasquale Padovanoa baggage handler who was in the hangar, who was taken to the burns department of the Niguarda hospital in Milan where he remained in a coma for four months.
What changed after the Linate plane crash: the new procedures
The most immediate consequences of the Linate tragedy concern the organization of the Milan airport. To avoid any possible confusion, after October 8, 2001 the R5 and R6 fittings have been renamed N and K respectively. Furthermore, the S4 rest point has been completely removed and new horizontal no-entry signs have been introduced (“NO ENTRY” painted yellow). A couple of months later, on 19 December 2001, a ground radar was inaugurated not only at Linate but also at other airports, such as that of Orio al Serio near Bergamo and that of Turin Caselle.
The most important consequence of the accident, however, concerns the revision of the procedures to be followed at national level in case of poor visibility (i.e., general visibility less than 800 meters or runway visibility less than 550 meters). The new code was drawn up in 2003 by the National Civil Aviation Authority and officially came into operation in 2004, with the title Permanent operational provisions for low visibility proceduresat the disposal of ENAV.
