A new airplain hijacked - 30 minutes ago!

[Maaja]

It happened in Milano. Does anyone know why it happened?

[Dhul Fiqar]

CNN say it's not a hijacking, but an accident, but they're not sure. At least 2 people died (in the building I think, not including passengers on the plane).

I'll post back if there's anything new...

[Dhul Fiqar]

OK, some details are in.

The plane (a Piper, apparently) radioed in that it was having difficulties with it's landing gear. A couple of minutes later it hit the 22nd to 25th floors of the Pirelli building that houses the regional government offices. It's not known if any high-ranking people are dead, they're assuming the pilot lost control, but frankly everything is very sketchy right now. It's just been about 15 minutes.
The plane was coming from Switzerland.

Apparently there was a declaration right away that it was a terrorist act, but there was a hasty withdrawal of that statement when they found out about the technical problems involving the landing gear. Personally, I'm pretty sure that's not the end of it.

--- G. Raven

[RAM]

There are reports that at least 1 man is dead and maybe a few orthers. People cam running out with blood ont her hands and reports of a sos mesage before impact. They were also working on the building so some floors were not acupied. Plane had only 2 people on boread. Top floors are still on fire. Also reports that the plane was on fire before it hit the building. Infomation as of 17:46GMT

(Edited by RAM at 6:46 pm on April 18, 2002)

[Vladimir]

Pilot meant to be 75 yrs old, possibly an accident.

[PunkRawker677]

3 dead now.. no known terrorist connection..

so they say...

[pastradamus]

But thats still weird 2 accidents in da space of 4months in milan.

[Angie]

From what I heard, the pilot had apparently been blackmailed by some people. Had already given over a truckload of money to them, then ended his own life to stop the blackmail from continuing, by the sound of it.

[Lefty]

how come i havent heard about this? I read a lot of news stuff both on the internet and off... And since i am posting a day later than the post was started, does anyone know anything new?

[mcleodstickle]

I aint heard anything bout it either...

[Maaja]

Now I've heard that the pilot commited the suicide because he didn't had any money.

[Dhul Fiqar]

I haven't got any money either, but I never really saw crashing into an Italian high-rise as a solution...

Anyway, it seems the guy was pretty messed up, poor guy, but he didn't really have to be so dramatic about it and kill those other people.

--- G. Raven

[Angie]

We'll never know when it was that he decided to crash the plane. He was, after all, a pilot - it doesn't sound like he trained himself just for that one job, nor does it sound like he was untrained. He might have been doing a flying job like any other day, and started thinking about the reasons why he wanted to die. Thinking more and more makes a person more and more paranoid, and he could very easily have gotten to a point where he just wanted to end it there and then, so slammed into the skyscraper. That doesn't automatically mean that he plotted it all, from before even taking off. If indeed it were the case that it was a spur-of-the-moment thing, his senses would have been too far gone for him to have thought about other casualties. He would have only wanted the silence of death, that's all that would have been running through his head.

Since we don't know what was running through his head those last few minutes, or even the last 30 minutes, we are not entitled to judge him, cannot try to stick a square peg into a round hole.

Whatever reason he had had, life had gotten far too much for him, and he wanted it ended. That's all we've got to go on, nothing else. Making up endings for him, and criticising him because of them, isn't going to answer why it happened, nor should it be expected to.

[Dhul Fiqar]

Well said, Angie.

I didn't mean any disrespect, since I know what it's like to be suicidal, the circumstances just puzzled me.

--- G. Raven