|
||||||||
  |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Italy aircrash victims remembered
MILAN, Italy -- Relatives of the 118 victims of Italy's worst civil aviation disaster marked the anniversary of last October's crash with a memorial. Air traffic was temporarily halted at at Milan's Linate Airport on Tuesday to let relatives of the dead place white roses on the tarmac. Among those at the commemoration was Pasquale Padovano, an Italian baggage handler who survived the disaster and is still receiving medical treatment for severe burns. Later, families and friends went to a stand of 118 beech trees planted last spring in a park near the airport. Beatrice Pettinarolifrom Novara, whose father was killed, told The Associated Press: "It's like seeing him alive again." The group was read a message of solidarity from retired Milan Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini. At a funeral service a few days after the disaster, Martini delivered a ringing denunciation of the negligence he said caused the runway crash. On October 8, 2001, a Scandinavian Airline Systems (SAS) jet bound for Copenhagen, Denmark, ploughed through a baggage hangar after colliding with a Cessna light aircraft on the ground. All 104 passengers and six crew aboard the SAS jet, four ground workers and the four people on the Cessna were killed. Authorities said the crash was an entirely avoidable accident caused largely by human error and poorly followed safety procedures. Giorgio Fossa, the head of the company that runs the airport, recently said the crash was "absurd." "All that needed to be done that morning was that all the required safety rules be respected," Fossa said in an interview with the publication Corriere della Sera. In July, Italy's national air safety agency issued a report saying many things went wrong besides a wrong turn by the Cessna.
Cmdr. Adalberto Pellegrino, an official of the agency, said communication between the aircraft and the tower had been "in English and Italian," as opposed to aviation standards that only English be spoken. In addition, despite the poor visibility, control tower operators failed to ask the Cessna to read back his instructions to make sure they were understood. Also, the ground radar at Linate had been taken out of operation. The airport is notorious among travelers for its morning fog.
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
