Linate Airport Disaster - Causes

Causes

The accident occurred less than a month after the 11 September 2001 attacks and the day after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan began, but SAS was quick to rule out a terrorist attack as the cause. This was subsequently confirmed by the investigations that followed.

The accident was investigated by the Agenzia Nazionale per la Sicurezza del Volo (ANSV). Its final report was published on 20 January 2004, and concluded that the "immediate cause" of the accident was the incursion of the Cessna aircraft on to the active runway. However, the ANSV stopped short of placing the blame unequivocally on the Cessna pilots, its report having identified a number of deficiencies in the airport layout and procedures.

Linate Airport was operating without a functioning ground radar system at the time, despite having had a system delivered some years beforehand, which had not been fully installed. The new system finally came online a few months later. Guidance signs along the taxiways were later found not to meet regulations; after mistakenly turning onto the R6 taxiway that led to the runway, there were no signs by which the Cessna pilots could recognize where they were. When they stopped at a taxiway stop-marking and correctly reported its identifier (S4), the ground controller disregarded this identification because it was not on his maps and was unknown to him. Furthermore, neither pilot of the Cessna was certified for landings with visibility less than 550 metres (1,804 ft), but had landed at the airport anyway a few minutes before the disaster.

On 16 April 2004, a Milan court found four persons guilty for the disaster. Airport director Vincenzo Fusco and air-traffic controller Paolo Zacchetti were both sentenced to eight years in prison; sentences of six and a half years were given to Sandro Gualano, former head of the air traffic controllers' agency, and Francesco Federico, former head of the airport. In the appeal trial (7 July 2006), Fusco and Federico were discharged. Another four people were sentenced. The pardon law issued by the Italian Parliament on 29 July 2006 reduced all convictions by three years. On 20 February 2007 the Corte di Cassazione upheld the decision of the Appeal Court.