ABSTRACT
In the early morning of October 8, 2001, the local air-traffi c controllers at Milan Linate airport in Italy were operating at capacity for quite some time when one of the worst aviation disasters to ever take place in Europe was about to hit. A dense layer of fog had formed overnight and was stationed over the busy airport, adding workload for the controllers as they had to cope with an inoperative radar for control of ground operations. At about 6:10 am D-IEVX, a Cessna Citation was taxiing out for an intended demonstration fl ight to Paris. Th e pilot misinterpreted his position and accidentally entered runway 36, around the time when Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) fl ight 686 was being cleared for takeoff . During the take-off roll, the Scandinavian MD-87 seemed to gain visual contact with the Citation about 1 second prior to impact, as data recorders indicated an abrupt pitch up pressure on the control column combined with an unintelligible exclamation. In the subsequent runway collision, occurring at about 150 kts for the Scandinavian airliner, the Citation was chopped into three parts, while the SAS MD87 lost the right engine and the right main landing gear. Th e Scandinavian fl ight crew managed to get the plane airborne and keep marginal control of the aircraft for a few seconds, before they eventually slammed
into a baggage-handling building located aft er the departure end of the runway. Th e impact forces and subsequent fi res caused the death of 110 people onboard SAS 686, and 4 onboard the Citation, in addition to 4 airport employees on the ground.
