A small private ultralight plane that departed yesterday afternoon from the Gemini airfield crashed around 17:30 pm, near the residential area, just 200 meters from the houses.
The bodies of the victims: Tommaso Arbace, 73, building contractor from Gagliano del Capo (LE), pilot of the small plane, and the passenger Gianluca Causo, 43, from Melissano (LE), were recovered by the team of firefighters who worked around the aircraft carcass.
The cause of the accident is still unknown. The aircraft, an advanced ultralight, a two-seater model "Freccia" from the Salento company Promec is a latest generation aircraft made of very performing carbon and fiberglass and can reach a speed of over 250Kmh.
According to some witnesses, the aircraft has made a sudden turn immediately after take-off, a maneuver that the flight manual forbids in the delicate phase in which the aircraft takes altitude, and then precipitates a few seconds after taking fire in the impact with the ground .