A pilot from the Italian Air Force’s Frecce Tricolore acrobatic team crashed during takeoff from Turin-Caselle airport in northwestern Italy less than a second before the fatal crash.
Video posted on YouTube shows one of the team’s Aermacchi MB-339PAN jets breaking out of its formation of five as it struggles to gain altitude. The pilot ejected just before impact. According to a report by Italian news agency ANSA, the burning wreckage shot out of the airport grounds and crashed into a car, killing a five-year-old girl and sending her three surviving family members to the hospital with burns.
ANSA reported that the plane experienced an engine problem on takeoff before the crash. Frecce Tricolore were reportedly on their way to a performance at the Vercelli Airshow on Saturday.
Turin prosecutors have opened an investigation into the crash, ANSA reported. The Frecce Tricolore have been flying the MB-339PAN since 1982 and were previously equipped with the Fiat G.91 PAN.
The Frecce Tricolore performs at the Dubai Air Show 2015. (US Air Force via Wikimedia Commons)
Three members of the team and 67 spectators died in the Ramstein air show disaster following a low-altitude mid-air collision in 1988.
We will update this story as more information becomes available.
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