"Year after "absurd" crash claimed 118 lives at Milan's Linate, families ask if airport is safer"

Tuesday, October 8, 2002

Year after "absurd" crash claimed 118 lives at Milan's Linate, families
ask if airport is safer 
By FRANCES D'EMILIO
The Associated Press


MILAN, Italy - When an airliner collided with a small jet and burst into
flames on the runway of Milan's Linate airport barely a month after the
Sept. 11 attacks, fresh terrorism was immediately feared. 

But the fire was barely extinguished and the 118 bodies extracted from
the wreckage when it became shockingly apparent that the carnage wasn't
the result of a suicide strike but a horrifying combination of human
error, weather and other factors. 

On Tuesday, the first anniversary of Italy's worst civil-aviation
disaster, loved ones of the victims were gathering here to seek solace
in one another's company and ask why it happened and what has been done
to spare future tragedy. 

"It's very painful," said Josh King, whose younger sister, Jessica, from
the Los Angeles area, was killed in the crash. "It was so easily
preventable." 

Indeed, the head of the company that runs the airport recently said the
crash was "absurd" and entirely avoidable. 

On Oct. 8, 2001, a typically foggy fall morning for Milan, a Cessna
business jet taxied down a wrong path and onto the runway of a
Scandinavian Airlines System MD-87 jetliner accelerating for takeoff,
bound for Copenhagen. 

The two aircraft collided, and the jetliner swerved into a
baggage-handling hangar, shearing through two concrete pillars and
triggering the collapse of the hangar's roof. 

All 104 passengers and six crew aboard the SAS jet, four ground workers
and the four people on the Cessna perished. 

The dead included Italians, Swedes, Danes, Finns, Norwegians, a
Romanian, a Briton, a South African and King, who had U.S.-British
citizenship. 

In July, Italy's national air safety agency issued a report saying many
things went wrong besides the Cessna's wrong turn. 

Miscommunication between the Cessna's pilot and Linate's control-tower
was one error, said Cmdr. Adalberto Pellegrino, an official of the
agency. 

"The communication was in English and Italian," as opposed to aviation
standards that only English be spoken, Pellegrino said Monday. And,
despite the poor visibility, control tower operators failed to ask the
Cessna to read back his instructions to make sure they were understood. 

Fog at the airport, where the ground radar had been taken out of
operation while a new system was to be installed, aggravated the
situation. 

Confusing signs on the runway also were cited. 

"It wasn't just the signs or some other factor, but a combination of
factors," said Milan Prosecutor Giuliano Turone, whose office has asked
for the indictment of 11 people on charges of manslaughter and causing a
disaster through "grave negligence." 

Among the 11 are control tower personnel and officials from the company
that runs Milan's Linate and Malpensa airports, the national agency for
air traffic control and the national agency for civil aviation. 

A hearing on the indictment request is expected next month. 

After an outcry over the lack of functioning ground radar, the system
went into operation a few months after the crash. 

But little else has been done, despite the safety agency's findings in
July and a parliamentary commission's call for an overhaul of Italy's
myriad of air-transport agencies which sometimes have overlapping
jurisdictions. 

The head of the company that runs Linate and Malpensa airports, Giorgio
Fossa, recently called the crash "absurd" and "avoidable." 

"All that needed to be done that morning was that all the required
safety rules be respected," Fossa said in an interview with the Milan
daily Corriere della Sera. 

Josh King, who now lives in Milan, said the death of his sister, a
linguist with a budding career in hotel management in Copenhagen and a
fiance in Milan, has been especially hard on their father. 

On the eve of the anniversary, Jack King stroked a button he had made
out of a photo of the smiling face of his daughter. 

"Jessica died halfway across the world in a place he'd never been to for
reasons we don't understand," said Josh King, who has been demanding
accountability for those responsible.


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