Just one day after 118 people lost their lives in a collision between planes at Milan's Linate airport, six more people died in two separate helicopter crashes in Italy yesterday.
Five people died in the early hours of yesterday morning when an Augusta Bell 109 helicopter ambulance on an emergency run to a hospital in Pisa crashed just six minutes after take-off from Grosseto. Two pilots, a doctor, a nurse and the patient, who had been seriously injured in a car crash earlier died in the crash. Heavy mist or mechanical failure may have caused the crash.
In an unrelated incident, the pilot of a helicopter involved in maintenance work in Piedmont was killed when his craft crashed.
The re-opening of Milan's Linate airport, closed subsequent to Monday's plane crash, was delayed until 6 a.m. today. Airport authorities explained damage done to the runway and airport buildings had prompted a delay.
As the investigation into the Milan crash continued, it became more obvious that human error, probably prompted by the lack of ground radar, had caused a Cessna private jet to stray onto the take-off path of a Scandinavia airlines passenger plane bound for Copenhagen. Tape recordings of the communications between the Linate control tower and the Cessna indicated that the Cessna's pilot was convinced he was on a different path.