Itavia Flight 115
De Havilland Heron · Controlled flight into terrain caused by pilot error
From Rome Urbe Airport (LIRU) to Genoa Cristoforo Colombo Airport (GOA)
Event
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- Event fatalities
- 11 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- Occupants
- 11
- Survivors
- 0
- InjuriesFatal: death within 30 days. Serious: over 48 hours in hospital within a week, most broken bones, severe bleeding, nerve or organ damage, or serious burns. Minor: anything less. Glossary
- 0
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- Airline
De Havilland Heron
- Aircraft type
- De HAVILLAND HERON
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- I-AOMU
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- 11
- Route
- From Rome Urbe Airport (LIRU)To Genoa Cristoforo Colombo Airport (GOA)
Cause areas
- Personnel issues › Psychological
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
From the investigation findings the Wikipedia article reports, sorted into the NTSB's cause areas with AI assistance.
Approximate · Coordinates from the Wikipedia article; not checked against an investigation report.
From the Wikipedia article
Itavia Flight 115 from Rome to Genoa was operated by the Italian airline Società di navigazione aerea Itavia on Friday, 14 October 1960 with the Città di Genova, a De Havilland DH.114 Heron 2 which crashed on the slopes of La Tabella in the Monte Capanne range (Elba island) between the localities of Pente all'Ènnera (which in the local dialect means «precipice of the broom») and del Frate, at an altitude of 728 m, in which all 11 occupants of the aircraft, 7 passengers and 4 crew members, perished.
It was the first air accident suffered by Itavia.
The accident
The aircraft, one of the six De Havilland DH.114 Heron 2s of Società di navigazione aerea Itavia, registration «I-AOMU», departed at 15:02 on flight «IT 115» from Urbe Airport bound for Genoa Airport, where arrival was scheduled for 16:30. It was the aircraft's second flight of the day, having already flown the Genoa - Rome route in the morning.
At 15:19 the pilot Ennio Scipione made radio contact with Urbe Airport to report that the aircraft was flying over Civitavecchia normally, noting however that the weather conditions were particularly adverse and that it would be preferable to divert the aircraft to Turin or Nice instead of Genoa. As a response from Rome was slow in coming, while it was flying over the island of Elba, during a violent thunderstorm the aircraft - after crossing the ridge between La Grottaccia and Monte Cenno - crashed on the slope between Monte di Cote and La Tabella, in a particularly rugged and hard-to-reach area, a few tens of metres below trail number 10 of the Club Alpino Italiano.
Investigation and cause
Causes
The most probable cause of the disaster was the pilot's inability to establish the exact position of the aircraft; in order to get past the violent thunderstorm, not having realised that he was already over the island of Elba, he took the Città di Genova to a much lower altitude - by as much as about 800 metres - than the flight altitude, crashing at an altitude of 728 metres.
Translated into English with AI assistance from the Italian Wikipedia article “Volo Itavia 115” (revision 150466270, retrieved 2026-09-19) by its authors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Extracted as plain text: references, tables, images and some sections are left out; the translation may contain errors, and long articles were cut to their first 700 words. Read the article
Sources
Italian Wikipedia article: Volo Itavia 115
- Article
- Volo Itavia 115
- Translation
- Into English with AI assistance; names of linked operators and aircraft types from Wikidata. It may contain errors.
- Revision
- 150466270 · 2026-04-30 · retrieved 2026-09-19
- Wikidata
- Q4016240
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
Where each value comes from
- Record
- it Wikipedia article "Volo Itavia 115" (page 3389528, revision 150466270), translated into English with AI assistance
- Date
- Wikipedia article: the date in its opening sentence (the infobox gives none to the day)
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site; country from Wikidata (P17)
- Map position
- Wikipedia article coordinates
- Aircraft, operator and route
- Wikipedia infobox: aircraft type, registration, operator, origin and destination; route airports from the linked airport articles' Wikidata codes (OurAirports)
- Operation
- flight number in the article title
- Fatalities
- Wikipedia infobox: aircraft fatalities
- Ground fatalities
- not stated in the Wikipedia infobox
- Summary
- Wikipedia infobox: summary
Source notes (1)
- Wikipedia · Facts from the Italian Wikipedia article's infobox, translated into English with AI assistance, not checked against an investigation report. Independent review pending.