Authorities speculated on Friday over whether it was suicide or disastrous bad luck that led a pilot to fly his light plane into Italy s tallest building in a crash that triggered fears of a September 11-style attack.
The Swiss-Italian pilot and two other people died when the aircraft plowed straight into one of Milan s few skyscrapers in bright sunshine, gutting the top of the slender building.
Shortly before Thursday s crash, Luigi Fasulo, 67, told Milan s Linate airport by radio there was a small problem with the plane s undercarriage. Instead of circling the airfield as requested he headed into the city at low altitude.
Italy s government ordered checks on the health record of the pilot and former businessman and on his financial situation.
There are reasons to believe that something strange happened here...The plane did everything wrong from beginning to end, Transport Minister Pietro Lunardi told reporters.
If this accident had happened before September 11 one might just have talked about destiny, but seeing as it happened after September 11 destiny seems less plausible, he added.
Roberto Formigoni, head of the regional Lombardy government which is based in the scarred, 30-storey skyscraper, speculated openly on whether Fasulo flew into the building on purpose.
The pilot was very experienced and there s every reason to believe it might have been suicide, he said.
Milan s head prosecutor Gerardo D Ambrosio told reporters: The theories are that it was a sudden illness or suicide or a technical breakdown.
Italy s ANSA news agency said Fasulo made a telephone call to police in the Italian town of Como, close to the border with Switzerland, on Thursday morning saying he had lost substantial sums in secretive, cross-border financial transactions.
One newspaper quoted a relative of Fasulo as saying he had intended to kill himself, but the man s wife and nephew both ruled this out, other Italian media reported.
Fellow pilots in the lakeside town of Locarno, where Fasulo took off on his final flight, also rejected the suicide theory.
I saw him yesterday before he took off and he seemed very normal to me, said pilot Pino Scossa, a friend of Fasulo for 40 years. The idea he committed suicide seems absurd to me.
Police said 29 people were injured in the crash, but by Friday only three people were still in hospital.
News of the incident sent shock waves through jittery world financial markets, seven months after hijackers flew planes into New York s World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington.
The area around the Milan skyscraper, which overshadows the city s fascist-era train station, was eerily quiet on Friday as commuters wandered past, necks craned to see the damage.
Broken glass, charred chairs, twisted pieces of metal and paper blown out of the tower littered the foot of the building.
The explosion was so loud even my dog began to howl, said Rina Castello, taking her white mongrel Titi for a morning walk in a nearby square. People were running in every direction. I feel better now but I was sure it was a bomb at the time.
Officials on Thursday quickly ruled out a terror attack and air traffic controllers denied that an initial mix-up over messages could have caused the crash.
Fasulo took off in his propeller-driven Commander 112 aircraft shortly after 5 p.m. (11 a.m. EDT) from Locarno.
According to a transcript of a conversation with controllers, as he approached Linate he reported slight technical problems. At the same time, a helicopter asked to land but the control tower told it to keep away. Fasulo mistakenly thought the message was aimed at him and turned his plane away.
He was immediately told of his mistake, but later lost radio contact and did not send a distress signal before the crash.
About 1,750 people work in the 1950s building but the top floors were nearly empty as they were being renovated.
The regional government chief said the first 11 floors of the building might re-open for business as soon as Monday.
Last October, a Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS) passenger jet hit a private plane on a Linate runway, killing 118 people.
A pilots union said on Friday authorities should consider using the busy airport only for bigger aircraft.