An airplane instructor died last Saturday at the age of 42 after jumping into the void in mid-flight and in the middle of a class with a trainee. The events took place in Toledo, in central Argentina, and have left the society of the South American country shocked.
Leandro Andrés Bertazzo was the plane pilot who was giving an instruction to a student when, in the middle of class, he decided to jump out of the plane and leave his 22-year-old student alone.
The most surprising of all were Bertazzo’s words before committing suicide. And the instructor addressed his student before opening the doors and jumping into the void.
“You know what you have to do, keep going”
According to the first investigations, the plane pilot addressed the trainee moments before her death. “You know what you have to do, keep going,” were the instructor’s words before removing his headphones, his seat belt and opening the door of the aircraft.
Bertazzo had been working as an instructor at the Flying Parrot Córdoba school for four years and had accumulated more than a decade of experience in aviation.
The student managed to survive
After the event, the young woman tried to take control of the aircraft thanks to the fact that she already had a private pilot’s license, despite having only a few hours of flight time. Despite the state of shock, the young woman managed to maintain control of the plane, sent a warning message to the school and directed the plane to the runway, where it landed without incident.
This is an unusual event since Bertazzo himself had flown with a student hours before the incident, which meant that no colleague detected suspicious signs.
The hypotheses of the event
After what happened, the family was dismayed since Bertazzo was a happy person who was also going through a good stage since he was applying to join a major airline. However, the deceased’s father later confirmed that he was under psychiatric treatment.
The pilot had sought professional help, a situation unknown to his colleagues. Therefore, the main hypothesis points to suicide, although no possibility is ruled out.
Eduardo Álvarez, director of the Flying Parrot Córdoba flight school, assured that there were no indications that the pilot was planning to commit suicide.
