Survivors describe horror as Italy probes plane crash
Last Updated Sun, 07 Aug 2005 18:51:22 EDT
CBC News
Survivors of a plane crash that killed at least 13 people recounted clinging to the aircraft's wings or to floating suitcases as they were tossed in frigid, rough seas near Sicily.


Some of them said they heard first one engine, then the second fall silent moments before the Tunisian flight carrying 39 people smacked into the Mediterranean Sea on Saturday.

"As soon as we heard the crash, the water rushed in," said Roberto Fusco, 24, who was one of 34 Italian tourists taking the charter flight from Bari to the Tunisian resort island of Djerba.

"It was very fast. There was no preparation," Fusco told the Associated Press on Sunday.

He was one of 23 known survivors after the ATR-72 plane, operated by the Tunisair subsidiary Tuninter, went down 20 kilometres off Sicily's north coast at about 3:40 p.m. local time.

Authorities quickly recovered 13 bodies, but continued to search by air and sea on Sunday for three people who remained missing.


'Suddenly we hit and then it all went dark and the plane split apart'

About an hour after takeoff, the pilot reported engine trouble and requested permission to make an emergency landing at the airport in the Sicilian capital, Palermo. He never reached land and was forced to put down about 19 kilometres off shore.

Passengers described scenes of panic and confusion after the co-pilot announced in broken English that they were going down.

"At a certain point, we realized one of the engines had stalled," said Rosanna di Cesare, 36, who was going on vacation with her boyfriend and his mother.

"After a few minutes, the other one stalled too and the plane started to lose altitude," she told Reuters news agency. "It was like a film. Suddenly we hit and then it all went dark and the plane split apart."



"My boyfriend and I managed to swim out of the plane. The sea was rough and I grabbed hold of one of the wings while my boyfriend continued to look for his mother."

Fusco said he scrambled to put on a life jacket and brace himself before the turbo-prop plane hit the sea so hard that its nose and tail snapped off.

Then he undid his seatbelt, inhaled as much air as he could and swam to the surface, where another passenger pulled he and his girlfriend onto a wing, he told AP.

A number of passengers – many of whom didn't have time to don life jackets – managed to hold onto the wings or fuselage.

Others clutched luggage in the choppy water for the half-hour or so 40 minutes it took before rescue crews reached the crash site.

Di Cesare said she hung on to a suitcase before she was picked up by a motorboat. She and her boyfriend are recovering in a hospital in Palermo, where the survivors were taken.



"We were miraculously saved," di Cesare told AP. "Even if I lost everything, I lost nothing."

Her boyfriend's mother has not yet been found.


Investigators looking into possible fuel problems

Hospital officials said five survivors have serious injuries, including the pilot, who has a broken vertebra and injuries to the head and chest.

Investigators were inspecting the largest piece of fuselage on Sunday after the coastguard towed it to shore in Palermo.

Italian aviation officials said tests had ruled out impurities in the plane's fuel.

There was speculation that some fuel may have leaked or that a mechanical problem might have kept it from reaching the engines.


http://www.cbc.ca/storyview/MSN/world/national/2005/08/...ne-crash-050807.html