No traces of birds on the Freccia tricolore. Now the engine exam
There are no traces of impact with a bird in the engine of the Freccia Tricolore which on 16 September 2023 lost altitude and crashed into a car traveling along the provincial road that runs alongside Caselle airport. A 5-year-old girl, Laura Origliasso, died in the crash and was trapped in her car seat while the car caught fire.
An external examination of the remains of the aircraft, which was also charred, revealed no signs of a possible “bird strike”, the hypothesis that had first been put forward as a possible cause of the accident. The experts appointed by the Ivrea prosecutor’s office looked for remains of feathers and blood, biological traces in any case, with luminol, but the findings did not have a positive outcome, at least on the outside of the carcass and engine of the “Pony 4” .
It remains unclear whether there may be any inside the gears and turbines, but the engine has not yet been opened.
Plane crash in Turin, half of the Frecce Tricolori crashes
To exclude the possibility of a bird strike, the prosecutor’s office will carry out an unrepeatable technical investigation which will however evaluate two aspects: not only the analysis of the engine and the search for a fault but also whether the maneuver of the pilot, Major Oscar Del Dò (who is been registered in the register of suspects) has been corrected. If it were to be confirmed “from the inside” that it was not the bird strike that caused Pony 4 to lose altitude and power, it is clear that the investigation will veer towards the hypothesis of a technical failure. The investigators will therefore have to examine other similar accidents and evaluate the maintenance aspect of the Frecce aircraft, which entered into service in 1979.
