Airplane Accidents Italy

Marine Corps Capt. Richard Ashby was found guilty Friday of conspiracy and obstruction of justice for hiding and helping destroy what could have been crucial evidence of why his jet sliced a ski gondola cable last year, killing 20 people in the Italian Alps.

The pilot who crashed into an Italian skyscraper Thursday had been making a detour from Switzerland to Italy to save fuel taxes, friends and fellow pilots said Friday. Three people were killed, including pilot Luigi "Gino" Fasulo, and several dozen hurt when Fasulo's four-seater red-and-white tourist aircraft slammed into the upper floors of the 30-story Pirelli building in Milan.

A military judge ruled that prosecutors may proceed with the obstruction of justice case against a Marine navigator accused of destroying a videotape made just before his jet cut a ski gondola cable in Italy last year, killing 20 people. Prosecutors claim Capt. Joseph Schweitzer, 31, of Westbury, N.Y., destroyed a videotape he shot before his radar-jamming EA-6B Prowler hit the gondola cable during a training flight in February 1998. Trial is scheduled to begin Monday.

A 67-year-old businessman, flying solo and off-course after reporting mechanical trouble, plowed his small plane into Milan's tallest skyscraper Thursday, killing himself and two other people in a fiery scene that echoed the attack on New York's World Trade Center. As black smoke billowed from the wreckage 25 stories above downtown Milan, Italian authorities said the crash, which occurred in a clear sky, appeared to be accidental.

At 8:57 p.m. on June 27, 1980, a DC-9 jetliner in level and routine flight between Bologna and Palermo exploded without warning and crashed into the Tyrrhenian Sea near the island of Ustica. All 81 people aboard died. What happened? Government investigators couldn't decide if a bomb or a missile destroyed the plane, but most of the evidence suggested that the airliner was shot down by a warplane. Whose?

Capt. Richard J. Ashby was guiding a U.S. military plane through a cloudless afternoon sky over the Val di Fiemme, a playground for skiers in Italy's Dolomite Mountains, when something went terribly wrong. The 31-year-old Marine aviator from Mission Viejo had logged 750 accident-free hours in the aircraft, an EA-6B Prowler, in training runs like this one Tuesday and in the real thing--surveillance missions over war-torn Bosnia-Herzegovina. This was his first pass over the Dolomites.

A U.S. pilot on a NATO mission to monitor and enforce a ban on military flights over Bosnia-Herzegovina was killed Thursday when his jet crashed shortly after takeoff from an aircraft carrier in the Adriatic Sea, officials said. The FA-18 jet left the Saratoga and plunged into the sea, the U.S. 6th Fleet said in a statement from Gaeta, Italy. The pilot's body was recovered, but his name was withheld, the fleet said. The incident will be investigated, it said.

Relatives of 20 people killed when a Marine jet caused a ski gondola to crash in Italy last year asked President Clinton to compensate them for their losses. As they prepared to return to Europe after the first week of testimony in the court-martial of a Marine pilot charged in the case, the victims' families questioned why the United States would pay $20 million to replace a damaged ski lift but so far not act on their claims.

Eight Marine officers, none of them combat pilots, were chosen as jurors Friday for the court-martial of an aviator whose jet sliced through a ski gondola cable in the Italian Alps, killing 20 people. Capt. Richard Ashby's lawyers questioned whether he could receive a fair trial without combat pilots on the panel. Two combat pilots had been dismissed from the jury pool. But the judge, Lt. Col. Robert Nunley, noted that there are three aviators on the jury who fly helicopters or cargo planes.

A jury of Marine Corps officers will begin deliberating today in the court-martial of a Marine pilot accused of conspiring to destroy a personal videotape shot minutes before his jet sheared ski lift cables in Italy in 1998, killing 20. During closing arguments Thursday, prosecutor Maj. Daniel Daugherty said Marine Capt. Richard Ashby conspired with his navigator, Capt. Joseph Schweitzer, to hide and later destroy the videotape to keep it out of the hands of U.S. and Italian investigators.

Investigators of Italy's worst air disaster said Tuesday that the pilot of a twin-engine Cessna thought he was taxiing parallel to the Linate airport runway here when he crossed into the path of a Scandinavian Airlines System jetliner that was speeding toward takeoff in heavy fog. Monday's collision between the two aircraft caused the SAS jet to careen into a cargo hangar and burst into flames. All 114 people aboard the two planes and four workers in the hangar died.

A Scandinavian Airlines System airliner taking off from Milan's Linate airport collided Monday with a small business jet on a fog-shrouded runway, careened into a baggage hangar and burst into flames, killing all 114 people aboard the two planes and four workers on the ground.

The pilots of a U.S. Marine jet that sliced a ski gondola's cables in northern Italy in 1998, killing 20 people, acted as "criminals," an Italian parliamentary commission said. The panel said the U.S. chain of command at Aviano Air Base, where the airmen were deployed, was responsible. "It's a shame that these two criminals--because this is what they are--were acquitted," Ermanno Iacobellis, who headed the 25-member commission, said of the pilots. A U.S.

The families of all 20 people killed when a Marine jet clipped an Italian ski gondola two years ago have accepted settlements of nearly $2 million apiece, the attorney for five Belgian families said Tuesday. C. Torrence Armstrong, a lawyer representing the Belgians, said his clients will drop a lawsuit seeking damages against the United States in the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va. The settlements were accepted April 14, Armstrong said. He said the U.S.

Families of the 20 people who died when a U.S. Marine jet clipped a cable car line in the Italian Alps will each receive as much as $2 million in damages under a new law approved by Italy's Senate. The legislation, adopted Tuesday, names a special commissioner to identify the victims' relatives, determine the damages due and pay out the sum within three months.

One day after a U.S. pilot mistakenly bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade based on a bad map, top government officials stated that the fatal attack was "an anomaly that is unlikely to occur again." But the May 7 tragedy was no isolated incident. The federal agency responsible for drawing the outdated map that led to the assault--killing three Chinese journalists and injuring 20 other people--has a record of providing military pilots with faulty navigational data.

Just weeks before a Marine jet sliced a gondola cable in the Italian Alps, killing 20 people, pilots were briefed on new altitude restrictions, a squadron commander testified Monday at a hearing for the plane's pilot and navigator. Lt. Col. Richard Muegge said an order that pilots not fly below 1,000 feet was discussed at a squadron meeting Dec. 15 and reiterated two days later in an e-mail to officers who attended the meeting.

A military judge at Camp LeJeune, N.C., said he expects to decide in the next few weeks whether two Marine aviators will stand trial in an Italian gondola accident that killed 20 people. In closing arguments to their motion to dismiss the charges, attorneys for two Marines accused in the February tragedy said the military was pressured into charging them. Capts. Richard Ashby and Joseph Schweitzer each are charged with 20 counts of involuntary manslaughter and negligent homicide.

Congress has decided not to provide $40 million in compensation for last year's accident in which a U.S. Marine jet killed 20 skiers in an Italian cable car, a move an Italian official derided as "another insupportable slight." Senate and House negotiators dropped the provision from a wide-ranging package financing the air campaign against Yugoslavia, aid to hurricane-ravaged Central America and other items.