Aerolinee Itavia Flight 870 Aerolinee Itavia Flight 870 ( IH 870 , AJ 421 ) was an Italian commercial flight operated by a McDonnell Douglas DC - 9 - 15 which crashed into the Tyrrhenian Sea between Ponza and Ustica , killing all on board , while en route from Bologna , Italy to Palermo , Italy in 1980 . Known in the Italian media as the Ustica Massacre ( " Strage di Ustica " ) – Ustica being a small island near the crash - site – the disaster led to numerous investigations , legal actions , and accusations , and continues to be a source of speculation , including claims of conspiracy by the Italian government and others . Former Italian President Francesco Cossiga attributed the cause of the crash to a missile fired from a French Navy aircraft . On 23 January 2013 Italy ’ s top criminal court ruled that there was " abundantly " clear evidence that the flight was brought down by a missile . To date , this remains the deadliest aviation incident involving a DC - 9 - 10 / 15 series . Details of the flight . Aerolinee Itavia Flight 870 was a commercial McDonnell Douglas DC - 9 - 15 delivered on 27 February 1972 with the serial number CN45724 / 22 and registration I - TIGI ( Formerly N902H , operated by Hawaiian Airlines ) . A regularly scheduled transit from Guglielmo Marconi Airport in Bologna to Palermo International Airport in Palermo , Sicily , on 27 June 1980 , it departed 2 hours behind its schedule at 20 : 08 CET ( 19 : 08 UTC ) . The flight was carrying 77 passengers , with two pilots and two flight attendants . The aircraft crashed into the Tyrrhenian Sea near the island of Ustica , about southwest of Naples , at 20 : 59 CET . All 81 people on board were killed . Two Italian Air Force F - 104s were scrambled at 21 : 00 CET from Grosseto Air Force Base to locate the accident area and to spot any survivors , but failed due to poor visibility . In July 2006 the re - assembled fragments of the DC - 9 aircraft were returned to Bologna from Pratica di Mare Air Force Base near Rome . Official investigation . After years of investigations , no official explanation or final report has been provided by the Italian government . In 1989 the Parliamentary Commission on Terrorism , headed by Senator Giovanni Pellegrino , issued an official statement concerning the disappearance of Flight 870 , which thus became known as the " Ustica Massacre " ( " Strage di Ustica " ) . The definitive sentence asserted : < br > The perpetrators of the crime remain unidentified . The court , unable to proceed further , declared the case " archived " . In June 2008 , Rome prosecutors reopened the investigation into the crash after former Italian President Francesco Cossiga ( who was Prime Minister when the incident occurred ) said that the aircraft had been shot down by French warplanes . On 7 July 2008 a claim for damages was served to the French President . The " high treason " accusation against the Italian Air Force . The role of Italian Air Force personnel in the tragedy is unclear . Several of them have been investigated and brought to court for a number of offenses , including falsification of documents , perjury , abuse of office , and aiding and abetting . Four generals were charged with high treason , on the allegations that they obstructed government investigation of the accident by withholding information about air traffic at the time of Ustica disaster . The first ruling , on 30 April 2004 , pronounced two of the generals , Corrado Melillo and Zeno Tascio , not guilty of high treason . Lesser charges against a number of other military personnel were also dropped . The abuse of office charge was no longer valid , due to some changes in legislation , and the other allegations could not be pursued further due to the statute of limitations , as the events in question had occurred more than 15 years prior . For this same reason , action could not be taken against the other two generals , Lamberto Bartolucci and Franco Ferri . However , the ruling did not acquit them , and they were still alleged to be guilty of treason . Dissatisfied , they appealed , and in 2005 the appeals court ruled that the accusations were made on insufficient grounds . On 10 January 2007 , the Italian Court of Cassation upheld this ruling and conclusively closed the case , fully acquitting Bartolucci and Ferri of any wrongdoing . In June 2010 , Italian President Giorgio Napolitano urged all Italian authorities to cooperate in the investigation of the incident . In September 2011 the Palermo civil tribunal ordered the Italian government to pay 100 million euros ( $ 137 million ) in civil damages to the relatives of the victims for failure to protect the flight and for concealing the truth and destroying evidence . Finally , on 23 January 2013 , Italy ’ s top criminal court ruled that there was " abundantly " clear evidence that the flight was brought down by a stray missile and confirming the lower court ' s order that the Italian government must pay compensation . Theories . Speculation at the time and in the years since has been fueled in part by media reports , military officials statements , and ATC recordings , including radar images and trails of debris ; particularly , trails of objects moving at high speeds . A terrorist bomb . The technical commission supporting a 1990 judicial enquiry reported that an explosion in the rear toilet and not a missile strike was the only conclusion supported by the wreckage analysis . Missile strike during military operation . Major sources in the Italian media have alleged over the years that the aircraft was shot down during a dog fight involving Libyan , United States , French and Italian Air Force fighters in an assassination attempt by NATO members on an important Libyan politician , maybe even the leader Muammar al - Gaddafi , who was flying in the same airspace that evening . This version was supported in particular by investigative magistrate Rosario Priore in 1999 . Judge Priore said in his concluding report that his investigation had been deliberately obstructed by the Italian military and members of the secret service , in compliance with NATO requests . In April 1993 , the General Yuri Salimov , the Russian intelligence services , revealed that he had followed the events of Ustica through a Russian radar based in Libya , through the use satellite was able to monitor the southern Tyrrhenian Sea , " I saw that U . S . missile strike in error the DC - 9 » . On 18 July 1980 , 21 days after the crash , a Libyan MiG - 23 crashed on the Sila Mountains in Castelsilano , Calabria , southern Italy , according to eye witnesses and official reports . Media rumors reported that the plane may actually only have been discovered at that time , and that the pilot ' s body was decomposed ; this gave rise to allegations that the MiG - 23 may have been shot down at the time of the Flight 870 incident . According to the Italian media , documents from the archives of the Libyan secret service passed on to Human Rights Watch after the fall of Tripoli , show that Flight 870 and the Libyan MiG were attacked by two French jets . Ex - Mossad agent Victor Ostrovsky claimed on page 284 of his book " The Other Side of Deception " that " . . . every time Israel or the Mossad has been responsible for the downing of a plane , it ' s been an accident , and related directly to the so - called security of the state , like the shooting down of the Libyan plane over the Sinai and the Italian plane ( thought to carry uranium ) in 1980 , killing eighty - one people " . The term " Italian plane " clearly refers to Itavia Flight 870 . Conspiracy theories . There are conspiracy theories surrounding this event , based on the series of events that followed the air crash . For example , the vessel that carried out the search for debris on the ocean floor was French , but only US officials had access to the aircraft parts they found . Several radar reports were erased and several Italian generals were indicted 20 years later for obstruction of justice . The difficulty the investigators and the victims ' relatives had in receiving complete , reliable information on the Ustica disaster has been popularly described as " un muro di gomma " ( literally , a rubber wall ) , because investigations just seemed to " bounce back " . Some of the Italian Air Force officials who might have known about the disaster ' s background died suddenly . Memorial . In Bologna on 27 June 2007 the Museum for the Memory of Ustica was opened . The museum is in possession of parts of the plane , which are assembled and on display . Almost all of the external fuselage of the plane was reconstructed . In the museum there are also objects belonging to those on board that were found in the sea near the plane . Christian Boltanski was commissioned to produce a site specific installation . The installation consists of : Each loudspeaker describes a simple thought / worry ( e . g . " when I arrive I will go to the sea " ) All the objects found are contained in a wooden box covered with a black plastic skin . A small book with the photos of all objects and various information is available to the visitor upon request .