Rosario was 22 years old and was taking a normal flight lesson, like so many others. They were flying over a rural area near Toledo, Córdoba, Argentina, that Saturday, July 4. Suddenly, her instructor, Leandro Bertazzo, 42, told her something she did not expect to hear: “You already know what you have to do, keep going”.
He took off his headphones, unfastened his seat belt, opened the door of the Cessna 150, and jumped into the void from 250 meters up. Without explanation. Without prior warning. Rosario was left alone, in shock, with her hands on the controls of a light aircraft she had never landed without help. She did it. She landed the plane without a single scratch on the aircraft, while the federal prosecutor’s office in Córdoba tries to understand what led a pilot with a decade of experience to make that decision in the air, which ultimately caused his death.
His colleagues at the Flying Parrot school still cannot find an answer.
