Two men, Paolo Fagiolini And Riccardo Montanariaged 59 and 41, are died in the crash of their ultralight aircraft around lunchtime on Sunday 9 June. It happened atTuscany Flight airfield in via Cavane a San Miniato in the province of Pisa. The first was the pilot, with 25 years of experience: he was an upholsterer in Ponsacco.
The dynamics of the accident
The two victims would have lost control of the hang glider during landing, which fell crashing to the ground and the impact was fatal. They had left from the Casa Bonello facility where the Club del Volo is based.
The most probable hypothesis is that the aircraft had a sudden failure in flight which made it ungovernable. As a result, he crashed it to the ground at high speed, leaving the two occupants no escape.
Teams of the Pisa fire brigade intervened around the area to make the area safe and extract the two bodies from the hang glider cell, with 118 and police forces on site to investigate the accident.
The request for help was immediate by the witnesses who also asked for the 118 helicopter to be activated and then canceled it when they realized that there was nothing left to be done for the two occupants of the aircraft.
The technical assessments on the remains of the destroyed hang glider, which will be entrusted by the prosecutor’s office in the next few days, will be to clarify the causes of the accident.
The witnesses
Numerous witnesses to the fall realized almost immediately after take-off that something was wrong: “We saw it coming down, someone saw it already from above, someone else when it got close to the ground. I saw the last ten meters of what happened. We immediately understood that there was a serious problem because she hit the ground really hard. So we immediately alerted 118″, explained some witnesses.
Fagiolini and Montanari’s flight should have been the last flight of the morning. According to the managers of the airfield and friends of the pilot, the weather conditions had been good for years and allowed for flights without problems. “He was an expert pilot at besta boy who really knew what he was doing – other witnesses underlined – This morning we made several flights and they all ended in an absolutely regular manner. They were overflights of the area, all of rather short duration, 5-10 minutes at most».
The video report from Italia7, television of our editorial group Netweek:
The upholsterer with the hobby of flying and the barman
Driving the aircraft was Fagiolini, from Ponsacco, pilot, active member of the airfield and owner of an upholstery shop. Next to him was the passenger, Riccardo Montanari, owner of a bar in Bientina who, like many other people, had taken advantage of one of the two days a year of “free flight” organized by Tuscany Flight.
Both residents residents in Valderathe two were friends.
The Tuscan airfieldy Flight was born over twenty years ago thanks to the work of a group of enthusiasts which also included the hang glider pilot: it is a small center suitable only for ultralights who intend to carry out short flights over the area.
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