A student pilot was forced to land her plane alone after her instructor ‘jumped’ from the aircraft during their flight in Argentina.
The 22-year-old had been training with her instructor, Leandro Bertazzo, 42, in a Cessna C-150 when he evacuated the aircraft.
The accident occured on Saturday afternoon, July 4, near the small town of Toledo in the province of Cordoba in Argentina.
Investigators are probing the circumstances surrounding his sudden death after the student, who is believed to hold a pilot’s licence despite having limited flying experience, claimed he opened the aircraft’s window and jumped out.
Despite the shocking incident, she managed to land the Cessna C-150 safely and unaided at Coronel Olmedo Airport, where they took off, and alerted authorities to the emergency situation.
Mr Bertazzo was found de@d 20 minutes later in a field in the area the woman marked out as the place he could have fallen.
Eduardo Alvarez, director of flight school Flying Parrot Cordoba where Leandro had worked as an instructor for four years, recounted his conversation with the young student who said he ‘jumped’.
He told Argentinian media: ‘At one point Leandro told her, “You know what to do, keep moving forward.”
‘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.
‘She sent a message informing about the situation and proceeded to return to the runway to land.’
Describing Leandro as a man who was ‘always smiling’ and admitting no-one had suspected he was about to take such a dramatic decision, he added: ‘He took this tragic decision on board a plane with a person by his side.
‘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.’