Airplane Hits Skyscraper in Milan; 3 Die

A 67-year-old businessman, flying solo and off-course after reporting mechanical trouble, plowed his small plane into Milan’s tallest skyscraper Thursday, killing himself and two other people in a fiery scene that echoed the attack on New York’s World Trade Center.

As black smoke billowed from the wreckage 25 stories above downtown Milan, Italian authorities said the crash, which occurred in a clear sky, appeared to be accidental. Later, they said they were checking reports that the pilot had been in financial trouble and might have had a suicide motive.

At least 60 people were injured. The explosive sound of the crash and the image of a scarred and smoking tower, disgorging office workers spattered with blood, caused panic here over a possible terrorist attack and sent stock prices into a brief tumble in Europe and the United States.

President Bush was quickly notified of the crash, and the FBI was assisting in the investigation.

“The initial information . . . leads us to lean toward an accident” as the cause, Interior Minister Claudio Scajola later told reporters in Rome, tentatively ruling out a terrorist strike.

Pilot Reported Trouble

The twin-engine Rockwell Commander punched through the 25th floor of the 30-story Pirelli building about 5:50 p.m., past normal working hours for most of the 1,300 people employed there by the Lombardy regional government. Officials said fewer people than usual were on the top five floors, which were undergoing renovation.

“We all rushed to the window, and we suddenly realized it was something similar to the World Trade towers because thousands of pieces of paper were flying through the air,” said Maurizio Sala, a civil servant who works on the 20th floor. “It was the same image.”

The three dead were the pilot, a cleaning woman and a government lawyer, officials said. Three hours after the crash, rescue workers found a survivor on the 25th floor.

The pilot was identified as Gino Fasulo, an Italian-born resident of Pregassona, Switzerland. They said he was approaching Milan’s Linate Airport after a 20-minute flight over the Alps from the Swiss town of Locarno.

The pilot reported “a little problem with the landing gear,” and the control tower instructed him to move to the west of the airport until it was fixed, the Italian air traffic controllers association said in a statement issued late Thursday.

According to the statement, the control tower contacted the pilot again after seeing he was drifting to the north, in the wrong direction, the statement added. The pilot said he was fixing the problem, and the tower instructed him to move back into position to land. But the pilot again didn’t get into the right position, it said, and the control tower then lost contact.

“He wasn’t able to land, so he swung toward the city center--something he absolutely shouldn’t have done,” said Alfredo Roma, head of Italy’s civil aviation authority.

Andrea Artoni, an editor of the Italian flight magazine Volare, said the Rockwell Commander has a hand pump attached to the floor that can be used as a backup method to deploy the landing gear when the button on the control panel fails. He speculated that the pilot might have been working the pump and lost sight of where the plane was heading.

Pietro Marci, a former president of the Locarno flying club, said Fasulo had 30 years of flying experience. He said another club member saw the pilot shortly before takeoff and that he appeared to be in good health.

‘Everyone Was Stunned’

A flight instructor at the same club, Luca Predolini, told Italy’s ANSA news agency that Fasulo was “a bit of a cowboy pilot” who once ran out of fuel and nearly crashed his plane.

Late Thursday, two Italian television networks received and telecast anonymous tips that the pilot, who reportedly traded in artwork, was in financial trouble. An e-mail read by talk show host Bruno Vespa on Italian state TV said that tax authorities had seized $1.2 million from Fasulo recently. It gave no details.

Later, Emilio Fede, director of Italy’s privately owned Rete 4 station, announced that he had received a phone call late Thursday from a man who identified himself and claimed that Fasulo owed him hundreds of thousands of dollars. The caller, whom Fede did not identify on the air, said he had been threatening to report Fasulo to the authorities.

Italian officials said they were investigating both reports as a possible motive for a suicide crash.

Luigi Fasulo, a nephew of the pilot, appeared on Vespa’s program and dismissed the claims. “He had no financial or health problems,” the nephew said. “He loved life.”

It was the second time since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that a plane has struck a high-rise building. On Jan. 5, a 15-year-old boy flying alone crashed a stolen plane into a building in Tampa, Fla.

That boy, Charles Bishop, left behind a suicide note saying that Al Qaeda terrorists had tried to recruit him, but police said there was no truth to the claim. Relatives of the boy, who was the only one to die in the crash, have filed a lawsuit claiming that the acne drug Accutane prompted him to commit suicide.

Italians immediately assumed the Milan crash was a terrorist act. The city has been a center of alleged terrorist plotting by North African immigrants whom Italian investigators have linked to Al Qaeda. On March 27, the U.S. State Department issued a warning for Americans traveling in Milan and three other Italian cities around the Easter holiday.

A North African immigrant who works as a doorman at the Gallia Hotel, describing the crash from his post across the Piazza Duca d’Aosta from the Pirelli building, said he was so certain that Al Qaeda was behind the attack that he refused to give his name for fear of reprisals.

“I heard a sound as if a plane were landing,” the doorman recalled. “When I looked up, I saw the tail of the aircraft and then immediately afterward an explosion. There was glass and paper flying out in all directions. A person I work with fainted. It all seemed so unreal. I had goose bumps for two hours afterward.

“Everyone was stunned, and we were inhaling the smoke,” he said. “Soon afterward, the piazza filled with people, and people were running out of the hotel frantically.”

Milan’s main train station, about 200 yards from the skyscraper, was quickly evacuated and train service was halted. After-hours trading was suspended on the Milan stock market, which was already closed for the day.

The 415-foot-tall Pirelli structure, built in 1958, is a Milan landmark, Italy’s first skyscraper and one of the world’s tallest concrete buildings. Its diamond-shaped floor plan has inspired designs around the world, including the MetLife building in New York.

The crash left gaping holes on both sides of the 25th floor. A large section of that floor lost its walls, and smoke poured from the gash in one side of the building. Firefighters quickly extinguished the blaze, but smoke still flowed from the building late into the evening.

Ivan de la Torre, a 35-year-old Ecuadorean immigrant, was cleaning carpets on the 19th floor when the plane hit.

“I didn’t know anything about it until I heard this huge explosion,” he said. “At first I thought it was my machine that had blown up, but then I saw flames outside the window.”

Rescue workers in orange uniforms helped the injured as ambulances streamed into the area. Several people were rescued from elevators. At least 20 people were hospitalized, including a woman with serious burns.

Andrea Paplini, who works in a nearby Internet cafe called Il Boomerang, was standing outside the shop when the plane crashed into the high-rise.

“I saw flames shoot out of the side of the building,” Paplini said. “Then the building started to burn. People were running past me. Some were crying.”