Ascoli mid-air collision
Italian Air Force Panavia Tornado and Italian Air Force Panavia Tornado · Mid-air collision
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
- 4 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- Occupants
- 4
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
- Military
Aircraft 1 · Panavia Tornado
- Aircraft type
- Panavia TORNADO
- Category
- Airplane · from aircraft type
- 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
- MM7009
- Operator
- Italian Air Force
- Onboard fatalities
- 2
- Occupants
- 2
- 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
- None · no survivors
- Route
- From Ghedi Air Base (LIPL)To Ghedi Air Base (LIPL)
Aircraft 2 · Panavia Tornado
- Aircraft type
- Panavia TORNADO
- Category
- Airplane · from aircraft type
- 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
- MM7087
- Operator
- Italian Air Force
- Onboard fatalities
- 2
- Occupants
- 2
- 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
- None · no survivors
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
Approximate · Coordinates from the Wikipedia article; not checked against an investigation report.
From the Wikipedia article
The Ascoli mid-air collision is an air accident that occurred during an operational exercise on 19 August 2014 over the Marche Apennines, a short distance from Ascoli Piceno.
The collision involved two Panavia Tornado fighter-bombers of the 6º Stormo of the Italian Air Force and caused the deaths of both crews. It is the first mid-air collision ever recorded between two aircraft of this type in Italy.
The investigations into the causes of the accident were entrusted to the Public Prosecutor's Office of Ascoli Piceno and the Military Prosecutor's Office of Verona.
The technical expert reports highlighted planning and organisational shortcomings for which hypotheses of criminal offences were formulated; although after two years of investigation dismissal of the case had been requested, the supplementary investigations requested by the victims' families led to two officers responsible for planning the exercise being entered in the register of persons under investigation.
The accident
The contact between the two aircraft occurred at around 16:30 at an altitude of about 1000 ft, over an uninhabited wooded hilly area between the localities of Casamurana, Tronzano and Poggio Anzù di Venarotta, causing the fuel to explode and the aircraft to disintegrate.
The rescuers, made up of personnel from the Air Force, the Fire Brigade and the Forestry Corps, the Carabinieri, the Police, and the C.N.S.A.S., for a total of more than 200 people, quickly secured the area and cordoned it off to allow the recovery of the bodies, a task entrusted mainly to Alpine Rescue teams from six regions.
Apart from the four airmen, who did not have time to activate their ejection seats, no casualties were recorded on the ground.
The body of Mariangela Valentini, one of the two pilots, was found under a portion of the fuselage of her own aircraft. It was the last of the four involved to be recovered, as it was still physically strapped to its armed ejection seat, and moreover was located in a steep gully; therefore it was necessary to wait for a team of bomb-disposal experts from the 17º Stormo Incursori of Furbara so that the ejection mechanism could be defused, the remains brought down to the valley and the body recomposed at the Ascoli mortuary.
Investigation and cause
The preliminary investigations (August 2014 - March 2016)
In the days immediately following the accident the Public Prosecutor's Office of Ascoli Piceno opened a technical inquiry in collaboration with the Ministry of Defence with the aim of establishing the exact causes of the tragedy.
In July 2015 the commanding officers Mario Pica and Giuliano Currado, appointed by the Prosecutor's Office to carry out the expert assessment, delivered a dossier to the Prosecutor's Office itself, based on all the available data from the black boxes (Flight Data Recorder) that recorded the flight data of the two Tornados, from the military and civil radar tracks, and from the only CVR (Cockpit Voice Recorder) recovered from the crash site, containing the audio-video recordings of one of the two cockpits.
The dossier revealed that during the flight there had apparently been no communications with the crews, and therefore that the two pilots would not have been aware of each other's position.
Without ruling out technical problems with the on-board instruments, the experts concluded that Valentini and Dotto had been flying visually and without adequate ground assistance, thus highlighting serious "organisational shortcomings", for which the expert officers reported to the public prosecutor five possible persons responsible among the officers in charge of planning and controlling the mission, to be entered in the register of persons under investigation for the offences of disaster and manslaughter.
The dismissal request, the controversy, the reopening of the investigations (September - November 2016)
In September 2016 the same public prosecutor forwarded to the preliminary investigations judge Giuliana Filippello an 18-page report in which he requested dismissal of the case, indicating that there was insufficient evidence to sustain the charge at trial either against the five officers named in the technical report or against other persons.
In particular, in the same report the prosecutor explained that the descent of Freccia 21 was legitimate and consistent with the operating conditions, as well as advisable given the difficulties of contact with the radio control centre and to rule out any possibility of interfering with other flights.
The victims' families asked the magistrate, and obtained, that the dismissal be rejected, on the basis of doubts that had emerged during the investigations and still persisted. In particular, the failure of the MIDS/Tacan equipment, which would have forced Freccia 21 to reduce its altitude and therefore to collide with Freccia 11, was considered a detail to be examined carefully, since …
Translated into English with AI assistance from the Italian Wikipedia article “Collisione aerea di Ascoli” (revision 149405329, 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: Collisione aerea di Ascoli
- Article
- Collisione aerea di Ascoli
- Translation
- Into English with AI assistance; names of linked operators and aircraft types from Wikidata. It may contain errors.
- Revision
- 149405329 · 2026-02-15 · retrieved 2026-09-19
- Wikidata
- Q25400024
- 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 "Collisione aerea di Ascoli" (page 5835986, revision 149405329), translated into English with AI assistance
- Date
- Wikipedia infobox: date
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site
- 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
- operator named as an armed force or military unit in the infobox
- Fatalities
- Wikipedia infobox: total_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.