Romanian-born billionaire Dan Petrescu, his wife and son are among the victims of the plane crash that took place in the Milan’s suburbs, northern Italy on Sunday. Seven Romanian citizens were on board.
The plane was piloted by Dan Petrescu himself, who also owned the aircraft, the Italian media reported. According to Corriere della Sera, Dan Petrescu, aged 68, was the owner of the plane that crashed in Milan. Petrescu bought the plane in 2015, together with Vladimir Cohn, the former shareholder of Dinamo Bucharest Football Club.
The Italian publication also notes that Petrescu was a successful real estate investor, one of the richest people in the country, owner of hipermarkets and commercial malls (Metro and Real), who had both Romanian and German citizenship.
A partner of Ion Tiriac, with an estimated fortune of around EUR 3 billion, Dan Petrescu moved to Germany to escape Nicolae Ceausescu’s communist regime. He returned to Romania after the anti-communist revolution of 1989.
Corriere della Sera also reported that among the air crash victims there are also Petrescu’s wife, aged 65, born in Romania, and his 30-year-old son, Dan Stefan Petrescu, born in Munich.
Dan Petrescu’s mother, aged 98, was already in Olbia, at the family’s mansion, waiting for the other guests to join for a holiday in Sardinia.
Petrescu’s son, 30, was a researcher in Canada. He had arrived in Italy together with a couple of friends: an Italian from Lombardy and his Romanian-wife, who also had French citizenship. In the plane there were also the couple’s one-year-old baby and the baby’s Romanian maternal grandmother.
The list of victims
- Billionaire Dan Petrescu, who was piloting the plane
- Regina Balzat Petrescu, the billionaire’s second wife, aged 65
- Dan Ștefan Petrescu,the billionaire’s son, aged 30
- A Canadian friend of the son, Julien Brossard,aged 35
- Filippo Nascimbene, aged 32, manager at the consultancy company Start Hub in Milan
- Nascimbene’s wife, Claire Stephanie Caroline Alexandrescu, aged 33 de ani, advertising manager at Pernod Ricard, born in France
- The couple’s 1-year-old baby boy, Raphael
- Carolina Alexandrescu’s mom, Miruna Anca Wanda Lozinschi, aged 65
According to Radu Tudor, quoted by G4Media.ro,Carolina Alexandrescu was the daughter of Dan „Miki” Alexandrescu, former sports journalist of Formula 1, who died last year.
The last connection with the control tower
Three minutes after it took off the Linate airport in Milan on Sunday at 13:07, the Pilatus PC-12 plane allegedly piloted by billionaire Dan Petrescu started deviating from the approved route.
Corriere dela Sera reports that the traffic controllers of the airport in Milan got in contact with the pilot:
“Why did you deviate? To avoid turbulence?,” they asked. “No”, was the pilot’s only answer. The short dialogue took place when the plane had started to lose altitude.
In less than a minute, the aircraft vanished from the monitors, without asking permission to get back on the airport.
The plane crashed on an empty building at the outskirts of Milan, with all eight people on board dying.
The aircraft was flying from Linate airport in Milan, after it had flown from Bucharest to Milan on September 30.
Several eye witnesses recounted they had seen fire and smoke getting out of the engine before the crash.