Original subtitles

A Boeing MD-87 cuts through the morning fog.

The accident was inevitable.

They were doomed.

The plane, carrying 110 people,

erupts in flames at Milan's Linate Airport.

This is the most serious accident

in the history in Italy.

Incredibly, no one at the airport

has noticed the catastrophe.

Hello, this is tower.

No, nothing.

Valuable minutes pass.

It was astonishing.

Air traffic control still doesn't know what happened.

Only when the wounded come looking for help...

There's a red streak of fire at the end of the runway.

...do authorities begin to realize

that something is seriously wrong...

My God.

...at one of Europe's busiest airports.

Ladies and gentlemen,

we are starting our approach.

We lost both engines!

Put the mask over your nose.

Emergency descent.

Brace for impact!

I think I lost one.

Investigation starting...

He's gonna crash!

Milan.

The fashion capital of Europe

and Italy's economic and financial heart.

Milan is served by three international airports.

Only one, Linate Airport, lies within city limits.

It handles nine million passengers a year

on short flights all across Europe.

Alitalia 226 airborne, zero-five.

On the morning of October 8, 2001,

dense fog shrouds the airport.

The fog that day was very bad

and the general visibility was about 50 and 100 meters.

In the tower,

controllers have a heavy workload.

There are nearly two dozen aircraft to get off the ground

in the next 60 minutes.

Alitalia 2120, buongiorno, start up.

They handle nearly 500

radio communications every hour.

Linate, buongiorno .

Delta India Echo Victor x-ray, requesting startup.

Delta Victor x-ray,

you are clear to start your engines.

Ground, Scandinavian 686,

request taxi from 13.

Scandinavian 686,

taxi to the holding position, cat three.

Scandinavian 686,

taxi to holding position, cat three.

One of today's flights

is Scandinavian Airlines flight 686.

The Boeing MD-87 is scheduled for a routine flight

to Copenhagen, Denmark.

There are 110 people onboard.

Taxi holding point, cat three.

The Captain is Joakim Gustafsson.

He has been with SAS for more than a decade.

Scandinavian 686, your position please.

We still haven't reached

the main taxiway, Scandinavian 686.

First officer Anders Hyllander--

he has been flying for the airline for the past four years

and has clocked 2,000 hours on the MD-87.

The SAS crew were very highly experienced pilots,

so couldn't ask more for two qualified pilots.

With thick fog blanketing the airport,

the pilots have almost no visibility.

They must rely entirely on instructions

from air traffic controllers

as they navigate their way to the runway.

There are a lot of taxiways,

one runway for commercial aviation,

and there are a lot

of many different types of airplanes at Linate,

so it's a very busy airport.

High above the runway, air traffic controllers

normally have a clear view of the airport,

but not today.

Air 1937, where are you?

Between 18 and delta.

So you're practically in front of the tower, right?

Paolo Zacchetti--

he is the ground controller

responsible for guiding flights to the start of the runway

where planes take off every two minutes.

Taxi north via Romeo five.

Call me back at the stop bar of the main runway extension.

With Linate fogbound, he's got his hands full.

Scandinavian 686, your position please.

Now we are on the main taxiway.

Yes. Now we're entering the main taxiway,

Scandinavian 686.

At 8:01 a.m.,

Zacchetti hands SAS 686 over to the tower controller

for final takeoff instructions.

Tower, buongiorno .

Scandinavian 686, sequence to 3-6 right.

Ciao, Scandinavian 686,

line up and wait, 3-6 right.

Line up and wait 3-6.

The SAS crew must wait behind other planes

taking off from Linate's main runway, 36 right.

Alitalia 226, cleared for takeoff 3-6.

Report when rolling.

Low visibility is not a problem in the air.

It's a very big problem on the ground

because the pilots depend completely

upon the air traffic controller.

Delta Victor x-ray, confirm your position.

Approaching Sierra 4.

Roger.

Maintain the stop bar. I'll call you back.

Takeoff data.

57 tons, and it is checked.

Checklist complete.

Scandinavian 686, Linate.

The wind is calm.

Report rolling.

When airborne, squawk ident.

Once the plane ahead has taken off,

flight 686 begins its takeoff roll

down the airport's 7,800-foot runway.

And we are rolling, Scandinavian 686.

Auto-throttle on.

Set thrust.

V1...

At a speed of 140 knots...

Rotate.

...the pilots lift the plane off the ground.

What's that?!

Come on, come on.

Come on.

Something catastrophic

has happened to flight 686,

but because of the thick fog,

no one in the control tower has any idea.

It was astonishing.

It's so close to the tower, and nobody was aware about this.

Out on the tarmac,

ground workers have heard a series of loud noises.

Hello, this is tower.

We heard a number of bangs, like an engine.

We heard it, too, but we don't know what it was.

Seemed as if somebody was climbing the steps.

You don't have anything abnormal?

A passenger jet has been in flames

for nearly a minute at one of Europe's busiest airports,

but so far no one knows.

No, nothing.

This was incredible to believe

that this big accident happened

and nobody could see

what was happening at that moment.

The crash site goes undiscovered

until a customs officer spots an injured baggage handler

stumbling from the wreckage.

It took a while to figure out

that they had a big disaster on their hands.

The officer alerts emergency crews...

...but the controllers still don't know

there's been an accident.

Incredibly, Linate air traffic control

still doesn't know what happened.

Only now does the tower controller check

for the SAS flight on his radar.

He can't find it.

The radar does not show the plane

flying away from Linate.

Then they get a radio call from another plane.

There's a red streak of fire at the end of the runway.

Finally, almost three minutes after the accident,

Linate air traffic control raises the general alarm.

They ground all departing planes

and close the airport to incoming traffic.

Scandinavian Airlines flight 686

has crashed and exploded on takeoff,

but no one yet knows the true scope of this disaster.

11 tons of jet fuel feed a massive fire

where a Boeing MD-87 has collided

with an airport building.

Awful, terrible devastation.

The collapse of a roof of the hangar

and the SAS airplane completely destroyed

in many different parts,

and unfortunately the dead bodies.

The rescue people had problems

to enter the cargo building to rescue victims,

because the airplane was blocking the entrance.

Some 14 minutes have passed since the crash.

As emergency crews battle the fire,

Linate air traffic controllers

frantically try to understand what just happened.

There are two aircraft unaccounted for.

Paolo Zacchetti discovers

a private Cessna citation

did not return to its parking position

after all planes were grounded.

The main attention was focused on the SAS airplane,

so nobody thought that there was another airplane.

A private aircraft is missing, a Cessna, 5-2-5.

Ground crews search for the missing plane.

Finally, 26 minutes after the crash,

they find the Cessna burning and in pieces

halfway down runway 36-R.

It appears there's been a collision.

It's hard to believe that after half an hour

people became aware about the fact

that the Cessna was on the main runway.

There is another aircraft in the accident

near Romeo 6.

Air traffic controllers are mystified.

How did these two planes end up on the same runway

at the same time?

What's that?!

Come on.

Two planes are destroyed; a hangar is in ruins.

The scope of the tragedy is overwhelming.

It's soon clear that no one from either plane has survived.

The crash has killed 110 people on the SAS flight...

And four onboard the Cessna.

Inside the collapsed hangar, four more people have died--

118 fatalities in all.

This is the most serious accident

in the history in Italy.

You can't imagine.

I haven't taken it all in.

I heard three explosions--

boom, boom, boom--

and then a huge flame, a long one.

First there was a crash,

then this hot air that was inside--

this extremely hot air that burned my head.

My god.

Mario Pica--

he is the lead investigator

for Italy's National Agency for Flight Safety, the ANSV,

but he's not in command of the crash site.

It took me a few hours

to get access to the scene of the accident.

Unlike most countries,

Italy treats aviation accidents as crimes.

The police get priority at the scene.

After an air crash in Italy,

the criminal investigation automatically begins

and the police is involved

in analyzing this event.

Pica has a different goal.

It was mandatory to find out really what happened

and find the reasons

that could help us to avoid it happening again.

Grazie.

First thing I remember

was to have a look at the baggage hangar

where the rescue workers were still busy

taking out pieces of rubble of the aircraft

and looking for bodies and possibly survivors.

I decided to go and have a look

at the Cessna that was still on the runway.

I just sketched the first map of the position

of the various pieces of the debris

to reconstruct the dynamics of impact,

and there were intermingled pieces from the Cessna

and pieces from the MD-87.

As lead investigator and a pilot, Pica knows

the most valuable information in any air disaster

comes from the black boxes.

But the Cessna was not equipped

with either a cockpit voice recorder

or a flight data recorder.

The absence of the flight recorders

were really a drawback

because they are very helpful in any investigation

to precisely define what happened.

The Swedish Accident Investigation Board

sends a team to Milan.

It includes technical specialist Tom Zollner

and lead investigator Frank Kristensen from SAS.

They will work with Pica to unravel the accident.

We were called to be part of the investigation,

as it was a Scandinavian Airlines plane.

I guess we'll have to wait for authorization.

We realized that the investigation in Italy

was different what we learned.

In Italy, they conduct it as a criminal investigation,

and we as investigators have to wait.

Damn.

We were not happy about that.

We would like to see what the planes look like,

how the accident site looked like.

We were not allowed to be near the accident site.

The media worldwide attention

was on the Linate disaster.

The SAS airliner headed for Copenhagen

slammed into the private jet...

And so what happened at Linate?

What were the main causes of this accident?

What were the main responsibilities for this?

Investigators soon make a troubling discovery

about Linate airport.

So you're telling me

there have been a lot of these incidents before?

Air traffic controllers reported we have an average

of nearly one runway incursion per week.

It appears the nine million people

who use this airport every year

have been in danger for some time.

There had been other runway incursions.

This was shocking.

Less than a month before the collision,

a near miss on the same runway.

With an aircraft entering the runway

while another aircraft was taking off.

It was really a big shock for us

that it happened that often at Linate airport.

Clearly something is very wrong at Linate.

The morning after the crash,

investigators face national and international pressure

to figure out what it is.

Meanwhile, there were prayers

for victims of the crash,

Italy's worst ever civil aviation disaster.

Finally, the entire investigative team

is given access to the crash site.

All of us were trained investigators

and we knew what we were going to investigate

and how to do it.

But authorities have thrown a major obstacle

in their path.

So where's the plane?

The police have ordered airport workers

to move the debris off the runway

and away from the baggage hangar.

We got very angry.

The removal of the debris

actually removed a lot of valid information,

which we now never could see.

Debris from both planes

has been piled on a concrete helicopter pad.

Locating flight 686's voice recorder

will be a huge challenge.

We couldn't find the cockpit voice recorder.

The importance to find the CVR

was to check if the crew realized

the collision was actually going to take place

and to see how well they were trying to avoid it.

We can't know what the crew were doing

without the CVR.

We had to learn about the possible takeoff clearance

and if there were crew errors.

Did they receive takeoff clearance or did they not?

Here's what we know so far.

The MD-87.

Measuring the distance, we are certain

that the MD-87 had traveled for about 40 seconds

and gone 1,500 meters before striking the Cessna.

It was clear that the collision had occurred on the main runway

at the intersection from a taxiway.

The MD-87 had continued its run,

deviating slightly to the right

until hitting the baggage hangar.

Here.

Weather reports show that visibility

was only 164 feet at the time of the collision.

With the heavy fog that morning,

it was clear that environmental factor

was a contributing cause of the event.

V1, rotate.

Imagine an aircraft traveling

at 72 meters per second.

What reaction time would they have needed

to avoid the collision?

The SAS pilots would not have been able

to see the Cessna on the runway

until a split second before impact.

What's that?!

But fog should not cripple

a major airport like Linate.

Modern airports use a system of regulations and safety equipment

when operating in low visibility.

Airports avoid incursions

by having defined low visibility operating rules.

These rules can be augmented by technology, ground radars,

alarm systems and other things.

Airport runways and taxiways are broken down

into a series of checkpoints known as stop bars.

Aircraft must always wait for authorization before passing,

like a car must wait for a green light.

The system is designed to keep planes from colliding.

Planes can avoid each other at night,

so why should it be any different in fog?

We have to consider this right off the bat.

One of the first thoughts that came to mind was...

Pilot error.

...the possibility of a pilot error.

One of the pilots was not where he was supposed to be.

Investigators need to know which one.

The worst air disaster in history occurred

under eerily similar conditions.

In 1977 on the island of Tenerife in the Canary Islands,

583 people died when two Boeing 747s

collided on the runway in heavy fog.

In comparison with the Tenerife accident,

they were both in dense fog,

taxiing on the wrong taxiway was involved.

Communication was also involved,

as the KLM Captain thought he heard a takeoff clearance,

but he didn't.

Investigators wonder if the Linate disaster

is a case of history repeating itself.

They learn that the brand new Cessna citation jet

had arrived in Milan following a flight from Germany.

The German crew was now taking two passengers to Paris.

Since the Cessna was not equipped

with a cockpit voice recorder

and the CVR from SAS flight 686 has not yet been found,

investigators have only one record of what happened--

the air traffic control recordings.

We had to listen to the facts.

Our expectation was that the ATC recording

would reveal what actually was being said that morning.

Investigators pay close attention

to Paolo Zacchetti's conversations with the Cessna,

call sign Delta Victor x-ray.

Delta Victor x-ray, taxi north via Romeo 5.

Call me back at the stop bar of the main runway extension.

Roger, via Romeo 5.

Call you back before reaching main runway.

The Cessna was instructed

to go north from the apron along taxiway Romeo 5

to a taxiway that runs parallel to runway 36-R.

The route should have kept the Cessna off the runway.

But he ended up here instead.

Investigators make a shocking discovery.

The Cessna went south from the apron,

not north as instructed.

It now appears the pilots made the fatal error

that caused the accident.

Call you back before reaching main runway.

The control tower recording makes it clear.

The Cessna pilots got lost on the way to the runway.

The Cessna didn't follow the taxiway Romeo 5,

which had been authorized,

but took instead taxiway Romeo 6.

The revelation leads to an important question.

So why didn't anyone notice, hmm?

Delta Victor x-ray,

continue the taxi on the main apron.

Roger. Continue the taxi on main apron, delta Victor x-ray.

That is correct,

and please call me back entering the main taxiway.

Main apron? Main taxiway?

The recording reveals that the air traffic controller

did not clearly distinguish between aprons and taxiways.

His choice of words may have led the Cessna pilots

to believe they were headed the right way.

An apron is a restricted section of an airport

where planes park, are loaded or refueled.

Taxiways are roads from the apron to the runway.

The communication with the tower and the pilots

that morning of the accident was inconsistent.

They used the word "main" For different things--

main runway, main apron, main taxiway.

And please call me back entering the main taxiway.

But Linate Airport has several aprons and taxiways,

none of them designated as main.

That was a communication

below acceptable standards.

Play that again.

Investigators also hear

a puzzling transmission from the Cessna.

Approaching Sierra 4.

I don't see it anywhere.

It's not here.

Listening to the communications, I was baffled

when I heard the pilots reporting a Sierra 4.

The controllers' maps don't show S-4 at all.

Investigators are beginning to suspect

the error goes beyond the poor communications

between Zacchetti and the Cessna.

Approaching Sierra 4, Sierra 4 .

I asked him if he knew where Sierra 4 was.

Where is Sierra 4?

I have no idea.

That was very simple.

He confessed he didn't know where Sierra 4 was.

Pica finds that Zacchetti's managers

never gave him a tour of the taxiways

as part of his training.

Approaching Sierra 4.

Delta Victor x-ray, Roger.

Maintain the stop bar.

I'll call you back.

He had no way of knowing where Sierra 4 was .

The Cessna now has to cross the runway to get to the apron.

He keeps going past several signs

that he's approaching an active runway.

Air traffic controller didn't stop the Cessna.

Delta Victor x-ray.

At that moment,

the tower clears the MD-87 for takeoff.

Scandinavian 686, Linate, cleared for takeoff.

Continue your taxi on the main apron.

He should have stopped the Cessna, but unfortunately...

Roger. Continue the taxi on main apron.

...he thought that the Cessna was on R5 taxiway.

The Cessna pilot makes a fatal mistake.

With the MD-87 now traveling at 163 miles an hour,

he taxis across the runway.

Suspicions about procedures at Linate airport deepen

as investigators learn

that the exact same mistakes that led to the deadly collision

were made by another plane less than 24 hours earlier.

Frank, Frank, come.

Come and look at this.

I was shocked to find out that only the previous afternoon...

Same thing, 24 hours before.

...an aircraft had been cleared by the air traffic controller

to taxi onto Romeo 5.

24 hour. It happens here all the time.

The aircraft taxied really onto Romeo 6.

Because there was no fog that day,

the two planes saw each other and did not collide.

Investigators are beginning to suspect

that something about the airport, not bad pilots,

may be the cause of the Linate crash

and the frequent runway incursions there.

When we found out that the Cessna pilot

had taken the wrong taxiway,

first question was to explain what did he see

that brought him so much off course.

Okay, this is where they started.

The taxiway we went on was Romeo 6,

and we walked the whole length of the taxiway.

We wanted to put ourselves in the shoes of the pilot

to understand his actions.

They look for route identification signs

that are supposed to help guide the pilots.

The status of those markings

were in very poor condition, was surrounded by high grass,

and there was only a very few of those markings.

The markings painted directly onto the tarmac

are also vital for pilots.

When we came to the intersection

between Romeo 5 and Romeo 6,

we could see that the markings on the ground

were so badly painted

that even in good visibility it was difficult to read them...

Which made us understand

that for a pilot not familiar with the place

it would have been difficult to understand

where was Romeo 5, where was Romeo 6.

The faded markings help explain

why the Cessna turned right

when it should have turned left to avoid the runway.

They also come upon the reason the Cessna pilot

referred to the unknown position Sierra 4.

Approaching Sierra 4.

There's Sierra 4, but it's not on the map.

Actually Sierra 4 was the marking on the Romeo 6 taxiway

going towards the runway

but were not reported on any official map.

Approaching Sierra 4.

Delta Victor x-ray, Roger.

Had the controller known where Sierra 4 was,

he would have realized

the Cessna was approaching the wrong runway

heading in the wrong direction.

But inadequate markings and maps

still don't explain the collision.

Linate, like all modern airports,

is equipped with motion sensor alarms

to guard against runway incursion.

Even with the failures of all other systems,

the acoustic alarm should have worked,

and we wondered why it didn't work.

Reading the ATC communication recordings,

we couldn't find any alarm going on

when the Cessna aircraft crossed the stop bars

and entered the runway.

Pica decides to test

the runway incursion sensors himself.

I was told that possibly they didn't work,

but we wanted to be certain.

Okay, commencing test of the motion sensor alarm

on taxiway Romeo 6.

So one night when the airport was closed,

we made an experiment going over and over

through the sensors,

but we had a man on the tower

just to make sure that the alarm didn't go.

Anything?

No, nothing.

Again.

Eventually, we found out

that those alarms had been deactivated years before

to avoid unnecessary alarms

that were triggered eventually by an animal crossing

or a car doing an inspection during the night.

One week after the accident,

investigators still have not located

the cockpit voice recorder amid the aircraft wreckage.

Finding the CVR was crucial

in order to establish that there was no problems prior to impact.

So I decided to search

through this giant pile of rubble and,

and concrete and steel,

and eventually we did find the CVR.

The CVR of the MD-87 was carefully analyzed

to find out what had been said onboard,

what kind of procedures had been done.

Scandinavian 686, Linate.

Cleared for takeoff, 3-6.

The recording shows that the SAS crew

did receive the proper clearance to proceed down runway 36-R.

Cleared for takeoff, 3-6 set.

The SAS crew played no role in causing the accident.

They were the victims of the airport's failings.

The investigation has identified one final factor

that underlies how dangerous conditions at Linate had become.

No. There is no ground radar at Linate.

We have not had it in years.

The ground radar at Linate,

the old one was dismantled.

The new one was in boxes.

It had been there for years and not yet installed.

Why? I don't know.

Airport ground radar systems

detect movement of all aircraft and vehicles,

a vital piece of safety equipment at a busy airport.

If you have ground radar,

it's a good tool to establish what's going on in the airport,

even in low visibility conditions.

We can certainly say

that if the ground movement control radar had been in place,

the ground controller would have had the opportunity

to see the aircraft crossing the stop bars

and possibly then would have stopped the aircraft

before the collision happened.

Delta Victor x-ray, confirm your position.

The Cessna took the wrong path

due to flawed taxiway markings.

Without ground radar,

controllers couldn't properly monitor

the movement of the Cessna.

Add fog into the mix, and disaster was inevitable.

When the Cessna and the SAS aircraft

started moving, they were both doomed.

The accident was now inevitable.

Scandinavian 686, Linate.

Cleared for takeoff, 3-6.

Delta Victor x-ray, continue taxi on the main apron.

And we are rolling, Scandinavian 686.

Roger. Continue to taxi on main apron.

V1, rotate.

What's that?!

The cockpit voice recorder

gives investigators a detailed picture

of what happened at the moment of impact.

Noises in the cockpit

will also tell us a different control's been moved

and the ambient noise from the area mic

will give us information

on some of the sounds during the collision.

What's that?!

We realized that the impact

was more than one collision.

It was actually several collisions in half a second.

When that half-second of audio

is analyzed more closely,

investigators discover it contains

several distinct sounds.

So we exposed this data over a schematic of the aircraft

showing the travel of the sound.

By doing that, we could analyze

that we have several points of impact during the collision.

The painstaking research

gives investigators a better understanding

of how the two planes came together on the runway.

The MD-87 first hit the Cessna

with its nose landing gear at the Cessna's stabilizer

and then in a short order of time

the left hand main landing gear of the MD-87

hit the outer part of the right hand wing of the Cessna,

and then the biggest impact was

the right hand main landing gear of the MD-87

cutting through the cabin of the Cessna.

Investigators conclude the MD-87

lost its right engine after the impact.

The plane would have been almost impossible to fly.

But remarkably, the pilots almost managed to do just that.

Come on, come on.

After the collision,

the MD-87 did actually get into the air.

According to the flight data recorder,

the aircraft was airborne almost nine seconds.

The Captain made a heroic attempt

to fly the airplane.

Come on, come on, come on.

He tried to accelerate the left hand engine

and use it...

But it had ingested too much debris.

And the pilot did an amazing work

trying to control it.

Up to the last minute he tried to avoid impact.

The pilots could not have done anything

to avoid this accident

because the aircraft was traveling too fast.

Such a big aircraft cannot respond on a dime.

It's impossible.

I believe that both crew and both airplanes

think they did everything right,

right until the moment of impact.

It's now clear that a badly flawed control system

at the airport led directly to the crash.

What's more, it's beginning to look

like organizational failures

may also have prevented rescue personnel from saving lives.

Grazie.

How long was it before the general alarm was sounded?

The investigation begins to uncover evidence

of how failures at Linate airport

made for a bad situation...

Please call me back entering the main taxiway.

...even worse .

Hello, this is tower.

The wreckage of the Cessna was found

only about 25 minutes after the accident,

and by the time the fire brigade arrived on the scene,

all the occupants were dead.

Post mortem exams confirm

that three people in the Cessna

had high concentrations of smoke in their lungs.

They were still alive after being hit by the MD-87.

They were burned alive.

After the collision,

the Cessna burned for more than 20 minutes.

If the rescue to the Cessna

had arrived earlier,

certainly the two pilots would have survived the accident.

After more than six months

of painstaking investigation,

Mario Pica delivers his findings.

Though runway incursion by the Cessna

is listed as the immediate cause of the accident,

Pica does not entirely blame the Cessna pilot.

Instead, he points to the lack of proper signage

and taxiway markings at Linate,

as well as to the airport's failings overall.

A fairly simple airport like Linate,

with only one main runway,

it should be easy to cover this with the signs

and with paintings and so forth,

but apparently everything which could go wrong

did go wrong at that airport.

Delta Victor x-ray, taxi north via Romeo 5.

Call me back at the stop bar of the main runway extension.

And for some of the people involved,

the fallout is especially harsh.

Ground controller Paolo Zacchetti,

along with high-ranking officials from the agencies,

which oversee Linate, are handed prison sentences.

The judgment sparked intense debate.

Should human error in air accidents

be considered a criminal act?

I define the ground controller

as the 119th victim of the case.

I didn't have the equipment

that could have made me aware of what was happening.

Delta Victor x-ray, continue taxi on the main apron.

Roger.

Yes, it is true, he did make a mistake,

but it is the result of a system that failed.

Because of the tragedy,

Linate airport underwent a major overhaul

designed to improve safety.

Linate improved the airport

by installing the ground radar.

Some of the markings and signage was repainted.

The runway incursion alarms are functioning now.

Alitalia, 212, hold your position.

You are crossing an active runway.

Repeat, hold your position, Alitalia 212.

The big lesson learned in this accident, in my opinion,

is that people are prone to get used to failures.

There is no ground radar at Linate.

Accepting latent conditions,

getting used to a system that doesn't work

and by time actually getting the whole system

more and more dangerous.

An airport is a highly complicated place.

There's vehicles, there's airplanes,

baggage lorries, cargo lorries,

all sorts of activities going around at the same time.

There has to be a very high level of safety in an airport.

The reforms ushered in following

the collision on 36-R

have made runway collisions far less likely

and made Linate a much safer airport.

So you're practically in front of the tower, right?

Call me back at the stop bar.

Alitalia 226, cleared for takeoff, 3-6.