Airport Director, Controller Get Eight Years!

You can imagine Vincenzo Fusco and Paolo Zacchetti feel terrible already. Ditto for Sandro Gualano and Francesco Federico. They were all involved to one degree or another in the worst aviation accident to hit Italy in more than 30 years.

But to compound their misery, an Italian court has sentenced all four men to prison.

Fusco, an airport director, and Zacchetti, an air traffic controller on duty at Milan's Linate Airport in October, 2001, were sentenced to eight years. Gualano, the former head of the Italian air traffic control agency ENAV, and Federico, the former chief of the company that runs both of Milan's major airports, were given six-and-a-half years each.

"Italian justice has triumphed," said family association president Paolo Pettinaroli. "It comes out of such a difficult trial with its head held high." He lost his son in the crash.

All 116 people aboard a Scandanavian Air Service aircraft bound from Milan for Copenhagen died when their plane slammed into a Cessna single-engine aircraft on the runway in dense fog. The two German pilots on board the Cessna were also killed. Only after the accident did Italian authorities discover that the airport had no working ground radar.

All the defendants were convicted on charges related to negligence for not installing a ground radar system and for allowing the aircraft involved to proceed without it.

"From the Swedish point of view it's good punishment," said Swede Anette Forsman, who lost her husband and 15-year-old son in the crash. She told the Associated Press, "The things that these people who were involved did were really, really terrible."

Gualano said the verdict was the result of "foreign pressure" on the Italian judicial system. "I couldn't have saved any one of the dead," he told the Apcom news agency after the verdicts were read.

At Milan's Linate Airport, there is now a functioning ground radar system. Officials at the airport say they've made big changes that enhance safety.

Seven other people are charged in the case. They're to be tried seperately in proceedings that have been hung up on a technicality.

FMI: www.sea-aeroportimilano.it/Eng/linate/default.htm