# Aero Trasporti Italiani Flight 327

The Aero Trasporti Italiani Flight BM 327 was a scheduled commercial flight between Naples-Capodichino and Brindisi-Casale with a stopover at Bari-Palese Airport, operated by the Italian airline Aero Trasporti Italiani, using a Fokker F27-200, registration I-ATIR (c/n 10301, built in 1966, with 17,420 hours and 23,337 cycles at the time of the accident). On October 30, 1972, at approximately 20:40 CET, the aircraft crashed into a hill in the countryside between Corato, Ruvo di Puglia, and Poggiorsini, in the Province of Bari, causing 27 fatalities: 3 crew members and 24 passengers.

## Passengers and crew

All persons on board died in the impact:
    Crew
* Bruno Cappellini, 32 years old, first officer
* Giuseppe Cardone, 34 years old, captain
* Antonio Di Bella, 28 years old, navigator
    Off-duty crew members
* Bruno Malevolti, 25 years old
* Mauro Parlapiano, 25 years old
    Passengers
* Ugo Attardi, from Milan
* Franco Biraghi, from Milan
* Marino Brugoli, from Molfetta
* Vittorio Capoccello, 34 years old, from San Pancrazio Salentino
* Roberto Chiurazzi, from Bari
* Vincenzo Cocozza, from Naples
* Anna Colazzo, from Lecce
* Pasquale De Santis, from Lecce
* Romano Faraoni, from Bari
* Aimone Franceschini, from Ferrara
* Antonio Gardino, from Rome
* Luigi Iannacci, 30 years old, from Naples
* Sister Maria Natalina Macchia, from Catania
* Lia Martino Raia, from Naples
* Giacoma Mazzeo, 24 years old, from Trapani
* Franco Meetti, from Florence
* Maria Sofia Merico De Santis, from Lecce
* Adolfo Orsini, 40 years old, from Bari
* Donato Palermino, from Bari
* Paolo Peloni, from Livorno
* Giorgio Renga, from Perugia
* Sister Anna Suglia, from Catania

## The accident

The aircraft took off from Naples at 20:00, about 20 minutes behind schedule. On board, besides the three crew members, there were 22 passengers and 2 off-duty ATI flight technicians. The flight proceeded normally until about 50 kilometers from Bari Airport when Captain Cardone communicated via radio that he was in sight of the runway. Then the crash occurred.

## Investigation

The ATI technicians who participated in the inquiry commission stated that the aircraft had "belly-landed" on the terrain at over 400 kilometers per hour, causing the lower part of the fuselage to open, and during the slide on the rocky ground, everything inside spilled out.
The pilot's communication stating that he was preparing for a visual landing (at the time, the airport was not equipped with radar equipment for traffic control or the Instrument Landing System) and the aircraft's altimeter, found among the wreckage indicating 1,450 feet (approximately 442 meters), the height of the crash site, led to the hypothesis of pilot error.

## Alleged mysteries

The causes of the accident were the subject of various hypotheses, including one that attributed the crash to a malfunction of the VOR on board the aircraft due to the presumed existence of abnormal magnetic forces in the area. However, tests conducted by a group of CICAP members and published in Query, disproved the theories concerning the existence of particular anomalies in the Earth's magnetic field in the disaster area.