A flight instructor jumped from a Cessna 150 over Argentina on Saturday and died, leaving 22-year-old Rosario to bring the plane down safely on her own. The student pilot, who already held a license, kept control of the aircraft after Leandro Andrés Bertazzo opened the door and went overboard during the training flight.
That is why the case is drawing attention now: a routine lesson turned into a fatal in-flight emergency, and the person who should have been teaching became the victim. The plane was later impounded, and the incident is now under investigation by the Federal Court of Córdoba.
Bertazzo, 42, had arrived at the school in the Córdoba suburb of Coronel Olmedo on Saturday for a day of training flights. Eduardo Álvarez said the first flight went smoothly and that Bertazzo had also flown earlier with another student. The second flight on the schedule was with Rosario, and it was over a mostly rural area called Toledo when the instructor reportedly took off his headset, unbuckled his seat belt, opened the door and jumped.
Rosario did not have enough flying hours to fly alone, but she did have a pilot’s license. Álvarez said she handled the emergency with professionalism and landed the Cessna safely, despite being badly shaken. Afterward, he took off to search for Bertazzo’s body, spotted it from the air and radioed the Central Rural Patrol with the coordinates. Officers later found his remains.
The unanswered question is still the one that matters most: why Bertazzo jumped. Álvarez said the flying school had only recently learned that Bertazzo had been under psychiatric care, and that he had no clue the instructor was planning to kill himself. He said Bertazzo had worked at Flying Parrot Córdoba for a decade, had also worked in Chile, and was known as a licensed commercial pilot. For Rosario, the day ended with a landing she should never have had to make, and for investigators, it began the search for the reason a training flight turned into a death in the sky.
