Reggio Emilia, 15 June 2024 – Un Cessna airplane 2008 made an emergency landing shortly after 8pm today, in the Villa Curta area, in Reggio. The plane had just made a flight for the BFU parachuting school which is based at Campovolo di Reggio and the pilot was returning. It was the sixteenth/seventeenth launch of the day.
Everything as planned: the take-off, the arrival at an altitude of 4,200 metres, the parachutist’s launch and the pilot returning to base.
A Cesna 2008 plane made an emergency landing in the Villa Curta area, in Reggio Emilia
Something, however, must have gone wrong at the end the small aircraft failed to arrive at the landing strip, finishing the race in the fields, near via Pinotti in Reggio. Luckily the pilot did not suffer serious injuries. Indeed, “luckily not even a scratch”, they assure from the BFU.
They intervened on site immediately the firefighters they state police officers.
“The pilot says he felt a drop in power in the final ‘short’, an engine problem, perhaps the engine pump – he explains Paolo Haim, director of the BFU –. When you’re there and you’re not sure if you’ll get to the airport… he preferred to go down to the fields. He was alone, he had made the launch. The plane was already almost at a standstill, only for the small wheel to slide into a ditch.”
Director Haim cannot explain what could have happened: “Generally it doesn’t happen, the plane does all the maintenance it has to – he continues –. During the landing maneuver the aircraft was at idle, when going around he didn’t find the power and made a emergency landing”.
The Cessna is then ended up in a small ditch, insisting. “The propeller blades bent when entering the ditch, when this happens there are consequences in the turbine and the entire drive shaft will have to be replaced. Luckily nothing happened to the pilot. But this will mean a long stop at the school, unfortunately at the moment of greatest work for us. We are insured, but it’s about an American plane and now it can’t fly. We have to wait for the technicians from France, who will have to evaluate what happened. We are at a standstill for a few months,” concludes Haim bitterly.
