MILAN, Oct 8: At least 118 people were killed at Milan’s Linate airport on Monday in a runway collision between a Scandinavian Airlines SAS jet preparing for take-off and a small Cessna plane, Italy’s Transport Minister Pietro Lunardi said.
The jet, approaching take-off speed when it hit the Cessna in heavy fog, ploughed into an airport baggage hangar before splitting in two and bursting into flames, officials said.
All 110 people — 104 passengers and six crew — on board the Copenhagen-bound airliner died, officials said, as well as the four people aboard the Cessna.
Lunardi said that 56 passengers were Italian and 48 were nationals of other countries. Many were believed to be Swedish.
An official at the airport said that ground radar used to detect the movement of planes on the runway was not working at the time of the accident.
Osvaldo Gammino, who heads an association of companies using the airport, said the radar had been taken out of commission for maintenance three days ago.
The radar is used during poor visibility to track the movements of planes taxiing along the airport’s runways.
Italy’s interior ministry said first reports pointed to “human error due to poor visibility” as the cause of the crash.
The ministry ruled out the possibility of a terrorist attack following the US-British military strikes on Afghanistan.
Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi sent his condolences to Swedish King Carl Gustav following the crash, saying that he was “deeply distressed by this tragedy which has hit Sweden and Italy.”
He said the link of friendship between the two countries would become stronger “during this time of grief which we share”.
Lunardi told reporters at the airport that four ground staff working for Linate’s SEA management company were among the dead.
They had been working in the baggage warehouse, sited some 500 metres from the normal take-off point for airliners. Four survivors from among the ground staff were being treated in hospital, the minister added.
SEA said that between 20 and 25 people would normally have been working in the building, which was destroyed by the crash and subsequent fire.
The magistrate heading an official inquiry into the disaster, Celestina Gravina, said earlier that two of the survivors, pulled from the wreckage of the building several hours after the crash, were being treated for serious burns.
Emergency teams were continuing to sift through the wreckage for bodies and survivors, she said.
Airport buses normally used to ferry passengers to planes were being used to take the badly burned bodies from the site of the accident, ANSA reported.
Roberto Viviers, a local councillor, said he had visited the crash site soon after the accident.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” he told reporters.
“I arrived at the scene just after it happened. It was a terrible scene. The plane was almost totally destroyed.”
The director of Linate airport, Vincenzo Fusco, told reporters in a brief statement at the terminal building: “Our thoughts are with the dead and the injured.
“We are working to look for the causes,” he added, but declined to answer questions.
The Cessna, owned by a German firm, was readying for take-off to Paris when the accident happened at 0815 am (0615 GMT). Aboard were two German pilots and two passengers, whose nationality was unclear. Their bodies were among the first to be recovered.
Rescue workers told the ANSA news agency they had recovered 60 bodies a little over three hours after the crash. Emergency units were hampered by a fire aboard the plane in the early stages of the operation.
Police quickly cordoned off the airport, which was closed to air traffic in the immediate aftermath of the crash. Outgoing passengers were being taken by bus to Milan’s other airport, Malpensa.
Thick fog which enveloped the airport hampered the start of the emergency operation, preventing helicopters from taking off.
Firefighters and ambulance crew were rushed to the scene immediately after the disaster and local hospitals put on a state of alert. —AFP
