SAD NEWS: a minute ago Kylie minogue have just been involved in a terrible plane crash and she have just been confirmed d….
Can you imagine the news of 118 deaths at an airport on a quiet October morning, after, just a few weeks earlier, the whole world witnessed one of the most tragic events in recent history? And can you imagine that the first to hear the news, that is, the families of the victims, were actually the last to know?
This is what happened in the early morning hours of October 8, 2001.
The Linate disaster, however, was different from the September 11 attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. Profoundly different. There were no hijackings, no terrorists.
It wasn’t an attack. But the collision between an airliner and a small private jet on the runway of Linate airport (Milan), both of which then crashed into the baggage handling hangar, is in all respects the worst air disaster in Italian history. 118 people died. In terms of media impact, it can only be compared to the Ustica massacre of 1980.
But Italy of 2001 was a different Italy from that of the Years of Lead (the years that in Italy we usually indicate from the end of the 1960s to the early 80s). So let’s take a step back to those early third-millennium days and see step by step what led to a similar tragedy. A tragedy that seems to be forgotten by the collective memory but which certainly has not disappeared from the memory of the families of those who lost their lives that day.
What day was it?
If you had happened to turn on the radio early in the morning, you would probably have heard Xdono by Tiziano Ferro or Can’t Get Out of My Head by Kylie Minogue for the umpteenth time. Among the first news you would have heard on TV would have been that of the first American missiles in Kabul — it was the start of the war in Afghanistan in response to al-Qaeda attacks.
That morning in Milan there was a very thick fog, the likes of which they hadn’t seen for a while. The Po Valley pollution had made Totò’s infamous nebiun a distant childhood memory now. In fact, you would probably have confused smog with fog — and vice versa. Instead that morning there was fog, a lot of fog.
At Linate, one of the most important airports in Italy and the second in Milan after Malpensa, visibility was reduced to less than 200 metres. The flights were therefore all delayed and operated in the so-called RVR (Runway Visual Range) 3/B condition. Among these, we have the two protagonists of this story.
The first was scheduled flight SK686 to Copenhagen, operated by Scandinavian Airlines (SAS). It was a McDonnell Douglas MD-80 — a very popular plane in the 1980s and 1990s, usually used for short- and medium-range flights.
The second was flight D-IEVX of the German private jet company Air Evex. It was a Cessna Citation CJ2 headed to Paris.
On board this jet there were, in addition to the two German pilots, two Italian entrepreneurs: Luca Fossati, owner and manager of Star for a few years (the stock cube company, so to speak), and Stefano Romanello, manager of the Italian Cessna. Fossati was interested in buying that very aircraft and had agreed on a test flight to Paris with Romanello, who accompanied him on board.
The SAS flight was scheduled for 7.35 a.m. but was rescheduled due to poor visibility at 8.16 a.m. The Cessna was also moved from 7:45 to 8:19. Just 3 minutes later.
At 7.54 am the SAS flight was permitted to taxi — when the aircraft moves to the ground on the runway — from the ground movement control tower (GND). The route started from the north apron, where the aircraft was positioned, up to the CAT 3 holding point, passing through the R4 taxiway.
