Milan Crash Called An Accident

The day after a small plane slammed into a Milan skyscraper, evoking panicky memories of Sept. 11, investigators were trying to figure out why.

Italian officials ruled out terrorism almost from the outset, despite how sharply the images of Thursday's crash evoked the September tragedy.

Three people died, among them the pilot, and 36 were injured, with 11 still in hospital Friday.

"To look at it, one realizes that it could have had an even more tragic effect in terms of human life," Milan Mayor Gabriele Albertini said, craning his neck up at the twisted steel rods hanging from the landmark building.

Italian newspapers were filled with speculation about the crash, with some saying it might have been a suicide linked to financial problems.

The Lombardy region president, Roberto Formigoni, also surveyed the site, eyeing heaps of papers, shattered glass and the pieces of broken office furniture still at the base of the tower. He also insisted it had been an accident, but described the crash as "very, very strange."

"Certainly it was an accident. But it's clear that the plane shouldn't have been here when it was," he said. "I think it's the obligation of everyone to be certain based on the most definite reconstruction possible."

Air traffic controllers said pilot Luigi Fasulo, 67, reported trouble with his landing gear and veered off course minutes before his twin-engine plane punched into the slim, 30-story Pirelli building on a clear afternoon.

Eyewitnesses reported seeing the plane on fire as it slammed into the top floors setting them ablaze and leaving gaping holes in several others, reports CBS News Correspondent Allen Pizzey.

Doorman Mario Cataldi was opposite the tower when the accident occurred, and said Friday that he believed the pilot had tried to avoid the crash.

"I was leaning against the wall, playing with a dog," Cataldi said. "When the plane neared, it sped up and went upward. ... I think it was trying to rise over the building."

Cataldi also said that the plane had not been on fire before the impact, as some reports had said.

About 1,300 people work in the building, which houses government offices, but the crash happened after most had gone home for the day.

Those still at work were quickly evacuated. Workers said they'd recently had an evacuation drill — something inspired by a heightened concern for security following Sept. 11.

The streets around the tower were closed off to traffic Friday morning, and the square Piazza Duca D'Aosta — normally flooded with cars and morning commuters coming out of the adjacent train station — was quiet and somber.

"I feared it had been worse — a disaster," said Riccardo Bonacchi, peering out of the shattered windows of his nearby linen shop. "Today I'm calmer."

The pilot — who was on a 20-minute flight from Locarno, Switzerland, to Milan — had started landing procedures at Linate airport when air traffic controllers alerted him that he wasn't lined up with the runway, the Italian air traffic controller's association said.

The pilot reported "a little problem with the landing gear," and the tower told him to go west of the airport until it was fixed, a statement from the association said. It said there had been no distress signal, as officials had previously reported.

The plane drifted off course, to the north, and was told to move into approach position for the runway. At this point, the tower lost contact with the plane, the association said.

One witness, Fabio Sunik, said the plane was on fire before it crashed. The plane did not try to change course, "but just went straight in," said Sunik, a sports journalist. "Then I saw rubble falling from the building."

The Pirelli tower is a symbol of Milan, the heart of Italy's financial and industrial world. Built in the 1950s, the 415-foot (124.5-meter) -high building once housed the headquarters of the tire giant Pirelli.

Swiss police said the pilot, Italian-born Luigi Fasulo, 67, was a resident of Pregassona, Switzerland and a Swiss citizen.

Fasulo's nephew, Luigi Fasulo, told Italian state television that the crash was an accident. "Surely there was no intention on the part of my uncle to crash into the building," he said. "He was a person who loved life."

But Fasulo's son, Marco, a pilot for the airline Swiss, was quoted Friday in the Rome daily La Repubblica as saying it might have been a suicide induced by despair over financial problems.

"It was a suicide, a suicide, do you understand?" he was quoted as saying.

The director of the Locarno airfield, Sandro Balestra, told Swiss television that Fasulo owned the airplane and was an experienced pilot. It was instrument-equipped, but Fasulo no longer had a license to fly by instrument.

The plane was a Rockwell Commander 112TC, built by North American Rockwell in the 1970s, said Wirt Walker, chief executive Aviation General Inc., which owns the company that makes an upgraded version of the aircraft.

It was the second time since the Sept. 11 terror attacks on New York and Washington that a plane has struck a high-rise building. On Jan. 5, a 15-year-old boy crashed a stolen plane into a building in Tampa, Florida. He was the only casualty.