Plane breakdown at an altitude of over 2000 meters: 22-year-old pilot and passengers remain unharmed

The 22-year-old Italian Silvia De Bon has only had her pilot’s license for six months. During her most recent flight over the Dolomites – at 2,100 meters above sea level – the engine failed.

At the time, she was traveling with her older brother and his girlfriend. They are all safe and are currently hospitalized for observation.

They wanted to take a tourist plane from Trento in South Tyrol to Belluno in Veneto. They all come from Longarone, a town close to their destination in northern Italy.

In an interview with Italian newspaper La Repubblica, De Bon said: “I noticed the plane was losing power, I felt it descend, lose altitude and then the engine stopped.”

And: «I remembered the words of the pilot ‘Sully’, famous for his landing on the Hudson River in New York: the extra moment of reflection can be fatal. You need a lot of coolness on a flight.”

De Bon managed to glide over the snow of Lagorai and 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.” She eventually landed uphill, causing the plane to come to a stop.

A technical investigation is underway. De Bon suspects it was the cold or the thin air, she told La Repubblica.