A Student Pilot Successfully Landed a Plane by Herself After Her Instructor Jumped to His Death Mid-Flight

08 Jul 2026, 21:38 by Jerome London · Thought Catalog

Updated 3 minutes ago, July 8, 2026

This is a breaking news story, but the incident has been confirmed by CNN and Argentina’s public prosecutor.

The student, identified only by her first name, 22, had only limited flying hours when her 42-year-old instructor unbuckled his seatbelt, removed his headset, gathered his belongings, and forced open the Cessna 150’s cabin door mid-flight over Toledo, in Argentina’s Córdoba province, on Saturday.

Before he leapt, he turned to her and said, “You know what you have to do, carry on,” according to CNN affiliate TN. Rosario alerted the flight school, took the controls, flew back to Coronel Olmedo Airport, and landed the C-150 with no damage to the aircraft, all while in “complete shock,” the flight school’s director said.

A red-and-white Cessna single-engine aircraft, registration N17014, banks through a partly cloudy blue sky. (via Unsplash)

The instructor, Leandro Andrés Bertazzo, was a highly experienced pilot who had also worked as a flight instructor in neighboring Chile before joining Flying Parrot Córdoba about four years ago. He had finished a lesson with another student earlier that same day, and colleagues said nothing seemed off.

Eduardo Álvarez, the school’s director, told TN there were no signs Bertazzo was planning to jump. “He made this tragic decision on board an aircraft with another person by his side,” Álvarez said. “It’s impossible to think about it or understand it, but the human mind is so complex.” He called Bertazzo “a beautiful person with a great smile.”

Photo by Leandro Bertazzo.

Álvarez also noted that opening a plane door mid-air is extremely difficult, comparing it to trying to open a car door at 200 kilometers an hour, or 124 mph. Bertazzo’s body was found in a nearby field 15 to 20 minutes later. His father reportedly said he had been “having a bad time,” and family knew he had been receiving psychiatric treatment.

Prosecutors in Córdoba are investigating the death as an apparent suicide.

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