October 8, 2001-October 8, 2025: 24 years have passed since that tragedy.

It was 8:10am (local hour) when, at Milan’s Linate airport, two aircraft collided on a runway that was shrouded in thick fog. The toll was tragic, with 118 people dead —among them passengers and crewmembers (114) and airport employees (four); there were no survivors on board.

The two airplanes involved were a Cessna Citation CJ-2, which had departed from Milan bound for Luxembourg and during taxiing mistakenly entered a closed secondary runway because of the fog. At the same time, an MD-87 of the Nordic carrier Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) was in the takeoff phase for Copenhagen with 104 people on board. 

The tragedy occurred almost a month after the September 11 attacks.

Since that disaster, unfortunately paid for at the high cost of human lives, workshops, conferences and events have been organized to emphasize the importance of safety.