Silvia de Bon managed to land uphill, bringing the plane to a standstill. Bild: Screenshot Youtube
31.12.2022, 09:4031.12.2022, 13:04
The 22-year-old Italian Silvia De Bon has only had her pilot’s license for six months. The engine failed on her most recent flight over the Dolomites – at 2,100 meters above sea level.
At that time she was traveling with her older brother and his girlfriend. They are all safe and are currently being hospitalized for observation.
They wanted to take a tourist plane from Trento in South Tyrol to Belluno in Veneto. They all hail from Longarone, a town close to their destination in northern Italy.
in one Interview Speaking to the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, De Bon said: “I felt the plane lose power, I felt it descend, lose altitude and then the engine stopped.”
And: «I remembered the words of the pilot ‘Sully’, made famous by his landing on the Hudson in New York: The extra moment of reflection could prove fatal. You need a lot of cold blood on a flight.”
De Bon managed to glide across the snow of Lagorai and then land there. She said: «I started to descend slowly to avoid falling nose first. So I tried to soften the landing and keep the nose higher than the tail. My intention was to lean on the ground.” Eventually she landed uphill, bringing the plane to a standstill.
Silvia de Bon, 22, pilot of small light aircraft. The probable drop in power of her Piper’s engine in the trans-flying of the Dolomites forces her to make an emergency landing on a snow-covered gully at 2,100 meters on the Lagorai. Her 3 traveling companions were totally unharmed! pic.twitter.com/vHe6d263tT
— Claudio Monge op (@galatacla) December 29, 2022
A technical investigation is in progress. De Bon suspects it was the cold or the thin air, as she told La Repubblica.