Student Pilot Lands Plane After Instructor Leaps To His Death Mid-Flight

A student pilot safely landed a small aircraft after her flight instructor jumped from the plane during a training flight over the weekend. 

A 22-year-old student, reportedly named Rosario, was on a practice flight with her instructor, Leandro Bertazzo, 42, in Toledo, a small city in Argentina, when he removed his headset, unfastened his seat belt, opened the aircraft’s door, and jumped from the plane. Rosario then radioed Coronel Olmedo Airport to report what had happened before landing. 

Eduardo Álvarez, director of Flying Parrot Cordoba, the flight school where Rosario and Bertazzo trained, said the student later recounted the incident to him.

“At one point Leandro told her, ‘You know what to do, keep moving forward,’” Álvarez said. “‘He took his headphones off, arranged his belongings including his mobile phone, took his seatbelt off, opened the door which is very difficult to open and jumped out.’”

The two were flying a Cessna C-150 over central Argentina when Bertazzo jumped and fell to his death. Rosario contacted the airport before safely landing, and authorities recovered Bertazzo’s body in a nearby field about 20 minutes later near where she reported he had jumped from the plane. 

According to Álvarez, Rosario had only a few hours of flight experience. He praised her composure for safely landing the aircraft. 

“She was very shaken, but with complete professionalism she flew the plane to the airfield and made a perfect landing,” he said. “She maintained a very high level of training and professionalism.”

The flight was Bertazzo’s second instructional flight of the day. Earlier, he had taken another student out to fly. 

Álvarez said that Bertazzo, who described himself online as a former commercial pilot in Chile, was “always smiling” and that his apparent decision came as a shock to those who knew him. 

“He took his tragic decision on board a plane with a person by his side,” he said. “There’s no way to think about it or understand it, but the human mind is so complex, so treacherous. That’s why what happened, happened.”

An investigation has been opened by local authorities to determine what really happened in the air on Saturday. Currently, investigators are looking into possible mechanical failures that may have been reported about the plane. It is also being reported that Bartazzo received neuropsychiatric treatment that only his close family was aware of.