A Cessna training plane crashed on Monday at 4 p.m. at the intersection of Marconi and San Giovanni Bosco streets, in Valbrembo, Italy. The accident claimed the life of Daniel Tainoa 26-year-old flight instructor, and seriously injured his 19-year-old student, according to local media. The Echo of Bergamo.
A gardener who worked just twenty meters from the place of the accident was the first witness to react. Climbing a ladder to trim a hedge, he saw the plane take off from the nearby airfield and immediately noticed that something was not right. «I asked myself: ‘How come it’s so low?’. I didn’t even finish the thought and it swerved over my head, and I heard the crash in the next street,» said the man, who preferred to remain anonymous.
At 4:08 p.m., the gardener alerted the authorities. «Meanwhile{ I approached and heard the screams of that boy. I thought I was the only person on the plane. I didn’t see the other one, it was probably underneath,» he pointed out. The Echo of Bergamo.
The man tried to assist the injured man until medical attention arrived. «The boy was screaming and waving his arms«I gave him the first attention, but the ambulance arrived in a few minutes and, as soon as the doctors acted, I moved away,» he explained. He recalled that he did not hear the aircraft’s engine before the impact, only the roar afterward, and that there were no flames: just the destroyed remains of the Cessna next to the fence of a neighboring house.
The plane, before crashing, hit a power pole and cut the wires of a suspended distribution box. Other residents of the area also witnessed the fall. «Here it’s a constant coming and going of planes: they take off, circle around the airfield and land, and then take off again,» said one resident. «I’m not saying it’s dangerous, but those of us who live here wonder. And it’s not the first time there have been accidents or emergency landings,» he warned.
Who was Daniel Taino
Daniel Taino it had been like five months flight instructor at the Cantor Air school, with operational headquarters and maintenance workshop at the Valbrembo aerodrome and theoretical classes in Nembro. He thus fulfilled a lifelong dream: first he obtained a drone pilot’s license and then an aircraft pilot’s license, before becoming an instructor.
the school Cantor Air It currently has 257 students and 503 certified pilots. 93 percent of its graduates find employment once they obtain their license, which positions it as a reference in the sector in the region.
«Daniel was not simply an instructor at our school. He was part of the Cantor Air family. We saw him approach aviation when he was a young man, with the enthusiasm and curiosity of someone who looks at the sky like a dream,» the school wrote in a Facebook post.
The institution mourned the loss of Daniel and sent its condolences to the family. «His memory will live on in those who knew him, in the students whom he accompanied in their training, in the colleagues who shared with him the passion for flight and in all those to whom he taught that professional competence and human quality can coexist in the same person,» the school said.
In addition, they expressed their support for the student who suffered injuries in the accident and his family. «We accompany them with discretion, affection and hope, trusting in the strength necessary to face such a difficult test,» they noted.
Investigators remained at the scene until after 8 p.m. to reconstruct what happened. The testimony of the gardener, who witnessed the accident from a few meters away and was the one who alerted the emergency services, was key to the investigation work.
