It was not possible to identify "with incontrovertible certainty" the cause of the accident which however "is reasonably attributable to the pilot's loss of control of the aircraft", between the lack of familiarity with the airport and the controls and the "operational pressure" for the hurry to get to Olbia.
This is what we read in the final investigation report published today by the National Agency for Flight Safety (ANSV) relating to the plane crash that occurred in Milan not far from Linate airport on 3 October 2021 which cost the lives of 8 people , headed to Olbia : at the controls Dan Petrescu, 67 years old, owner and pilot of the plane, dual German and Romanian citizenship and wealthy real estate developer. He was reaching Olbia with his family, where he owns a villa and where his 98-year-old mother was waiting for him : with him his wife Regina Dorotea Petrescu Balzac (65), his son Dan Stefan Petrescu (30) and his partner, the Canadian Julien Brossard (35). Also on board a family of friends: Filippo Nascimbene, a 33-year-old from Pavia, his wife Claire Stephanie Caroline Alexadrescu, their one-year-old son, Raphael, and his mother-in-law Miruna Anca Wanda Lozinschi.
That 3 October 2021, a Sunday, all eight had decided to reach Olbia after celebrating the baptism of the child. But the small tourist plane, which took off from Linate, crashed a few minutes later and was pulverized, crashing into the facade of a two-storey building on the border with San Donato. According to what was explained in the 177-page report, "no maintenance deficiencies emerged on the aircraft" and there were no particularly adverse weather conditions given that "the presence of ice was not reported at the altitudes affected by the aircraft during the flight of the accident."
«It was not possible to categorically exclude the onset of a failure that could have compromised the controllability of the aircraft - we read - however, this hypothesis, on the basis of the evidence acquired, appears to be the least probable».
Instead, "a conspicuous deviation from the route foreseen by the standard instrumental departure was ascertained without declaration of any technical problems by the pilot" during which he lost control of the plane - which crashed at "a vertical speed of 32,448 feet per minute" , that is, 164 meters per second - because «there may have been a saturation of the pilot's cognitive processes, with consequent channeling of attention onto the navigation system, which would likely have diverted the pilot's attention from the basic and manual operation of the aircraft».
“It is believed that a lack of recurrent training may have contributed to the failure to control the aircraft, as well as to inadequate management of a possible non-catastrophic technical failure,” the report concludes.
(Unioneonline/D)
