Departing from Trento they were flying to Belluno with a tourist plane, when the aircraft lost engine power to the point of forcing the three boys to make an emergency landing on the Lagorai group, in Trentino, in the municipality of Predazzo. Silvia de Bon, 22, who was driving the plane with her brother Mattia, 27, and his fiancée, Giorgia Qualizza, 28, took care of saving everyone. The three, injured but conscious, managed to get out of the cockpit and then climbed up to the bivouac to wait for help. Meanwhile, the area where the plane is gliding has been made safe.
“Now I crash, I thought”
“When the engine loses power the plane starts to crash. While that was happening I thought, ‘Wh, now I’m going to crash.’ Then I just tried to smooth the plane into the slope… I was lucky.” Interviewed by Corriere this is how Silvia De Bon speaks, the 22-year-old pilot from Longarone who brought the small plane to the ground and is now hospitalized in Trento hospital. Silvia guided Piper’s glide, arresting it one hundred meters below the bivouac which the three boys then added on foot. All in all he’s fine, a collar around his neck, some bandages and some pain.
“Normally the movement I made with the plane is wrong – he still tells Corriere – because the more you pull, the more the speed decreases and the plane falls. Knowing I was going against the mountain, I did everything to level the plane relative to the slope, landing on its belly. If I had crashed straight, I would have destroyed the nose and the consequences would have been worse. As if I had tried to go back: I would have hit the ridge and destroyed the entire lateral part of the Piper. At the time, the right thing to do was probably like this.”
“We wanted to go on a post-Christmas leisure trip with Mattia and Giorgia, he continues. We started from Belluno and wanted to go to Bolzano. Before heading to South Tyrol, however, we made a stop in Trento. So, after Bolzano, we wanted to go back via Cortina d’Ampezzo, but since it was too late, we decided to cut through Predazzo, so as to get to Feltre and finally return to Belluno. Then there was the accident”. Silvia will not stop flying, she has just returned from the USA to accumulate flight hours: “If all the people who have a road accident stopped driving their car, no one would drive anymore”, he concludes .
