City-Jet Flight 124

City-Jet Flight 124 was involved in an air accident on 24 February 2004, in the area of the Sette Fratelli massif, in the territory of Sinnai, in which it crashed.

The accident

In the early hours of 24 February 2004 a Cessna 500 coming from Rome and bound for Cagliari crashed on Punta Baccu Malu, in the municipality of Sinnai. The aircraft was carrying a heart that had been removed from a female donor at the San Camillo hospital in Rome and was destined for a patient awaiting a transplant who was admitted to the San Michele hospital in Cagliari.

On board the aircraft were three crew members, two of whom were Austrian. The presence of two Austrian pilots resulted from a complex chain of agreements between air companies which, starting from a request from the Cagliari hospital, led to the use of an aircraft based in Vienna. Also travelling on the aircraft were three members of the medical team of the cardiac surgery department of the aforementioned hospital who, after having carried out the removal of the organ at San Camillo in Rome, were heading to the Sardinian capital to carry out the transplant.

The area in which the aircraft crashed while in the landing phase is a mountainous district of modest altitude, which takes its name from its highest peak, Monte dei Sette Fratelli (1,016 m a.s.l.), and which since 1989 has been part of the regional park of the same name.

The pilot had expressed to air traffic control the intention of making a "visual" approach to the airport, where he was to use runway 32. This was reportedly motivated by the desire to reach the hospital quickly, avoiding the longer route that goes around, from the sea, the heights surrounding Cagliari. At the moment it disappeared from the radar screens upon impact with the face of Punta Baccu Malu, the aircraft was, according to the findings, at a height of about 3300 ft and flying at a speed of 226 kn, at a distance of about 17 miles from the runway.

The rescuers who rushed to the scene of the disaster found the remains of the aircraft almost disintegrated in the impact with the mountain and were able to recover the bodies of the victims during the day. The container with the heart being transported for the transplant was also found, but it was by then unusable.

Fifty-one years earlier, in 1953, the same area had been the scene of another air accident. A DC 3 of LAI, an airline that was a forerunner of Alitalia, crashed, and 19 people died.