Pilot instructor who jumped out of a plane to his death while giving a lesson ‘had been going through a difficult time,’ his father says
The father of a piloting instructor who leapt to his death from a plane while giving a lesson to a 22-year-old student has said his son had been going through a ‘difficult time’.
Leandro Bertazzo, 42, flung himself from the pilot’s seat of a Cessna C-150 on July 4, after taking off from Coronel Olmedo Airport near Córdoba, central Argentina.
He is said to have told the young student he was flying with that day: ‘You know what to do, keep moving forward.’
Bertazzo, who described himself online as a former commercial pilot in Chile, was then found dead 20 minutes later in a field in the area the woman marked out as the place he could have fallen.
According to Eduardo Alvarez, director of flight school Flying Parrot Córdoba where Leandro had worked as an instructor for four years, Leandro’s father said his son had been going through ‘a difficult time’.
On top of this, according to Alvarez, the man’s family revealed he had attended a consultation at a psychiatric hospital the week prior to his death.
Bertazzo’s loved ones said he was single, had no children and lived with his parents in the city of Córdoba, according to Argentinian outlet Para Ti.
Alvarez said of his employee: ‘He was an excellent professional, always cheerful, and greatly admired by all his students.’
Leandro Bertazzo, 42, (pictured) jumped from a plane mid-flight while training a student pilot
The 22-year-old was then forced to land the Cessna C-150 alone and unaided at Coronel Olmedo Airport, where they took off, and alerted authorities to the emergency situation
Emergency services were seen at the field where the Mr Bertazzo’s body was found
He added that he was ‘a wonderful person, with a great smile and a clear outlook on life’.
Investigators are still looking into his death. According to his boss, Bertazzo ‘took his headphones off, arranged his belongings including his mobile phone, took his seatbelt off, opened the door which is very difficult to open and jumped out.
‘[The student pilot] sent a message informing about the situation and proceeded to return to the runway to land.’
He added: ‘She was very shaken, but with complete professionalism she flew the plane to the airfield and made a perfect landing. She maintained a very high level of training and professionalism.’
Earlier in the day of the incident, Mr Bertazzo had taken another student out to fly before getting into the cockpit with the 22-year-old.
He added: ‘He took this tragic decision on board a plane with a person by his side.
‘There’s no way to think about it or understand it, but the human mind is so complex, so treacherous. That’s why what happened, happened.’
Officials have said the circumstances surrounding the tragedy are so unusual they cannot offer any explanation for the moment as to how it could have happened.
One of the lines of inquiry investigators are thought to be studying is whether the incident may have been the result of a mechanical failure related to a hatch or one of the aircraft’s safety systems.
They are checking the plane’s and flight school’s documentation and analysing communications maintained while the plane was in the air before the instructor fell out of it.
