The event was chaired by the Commander of the Air Squad, General of the Air Squad Maurizio Lodovisi, by the Commander of the Support and Special Forces, Major General Roberto Comelli, and by two managers of the Dassault Falcon Service
The ceremony began a few minutes late for the concomitant call of the Situation Room of the Air Squad Command which ordered the immediate take-off of a Falcon 50 for the transport of a 7 girl years from Cagliari to Ciampino.
After the welcome of the commander of Stormo, Colonel Alessandro Tortorella, to all the authorities and all the guests present, including numerous patients transported in 30 years of humanitarian flights, the speaker of the event, Captain Donatella Caforio, presented the day and given the floor to some witnesses of the important activity carried out by the Falcon 50 in favor of the community in its three decades of flight.
Touching was the intervention of the president of the Agebeo Association, Mr. Michele Farina, who founded a Hospitality Village on land confiscated from the mafia, thanks to which he succeeded in helping 340 well families whose children were hospitalized at the Pediatric Oncology Transplant Center of the Policlinico of Bari.
The history of Mr. Farina is inextricably linked to that of the Falcon 50, an aircraft thanks to which his son Vincenzo, suffering from a severe form of leukemia, flew in just 45 minutes from Bari to Trieste, where he received a bone marrow transplant that from there to 12 hours would have become unusable. Unfortunately the intervention produced only temporary benefits, but today Vincenzo continues to live thanks to the incessant support of the Association founded by his father.
Equally touching was the testimony of Antonino Verbaro, 15, who relived his flight of hope from Reggio Calabria to the Bambino Gesù hospital in Rome through the stories of his parents as the serious conditions he was in required the execution of urgent medical transport when she was only 17 days old.
During the ceremony, a second aircraft of the 31 ° Stormo took off for a new mission: a Falcon 900 EASY left urgently to transport a newborn of only 2 days from Cagliari to Rome for the subsequent hospitalization at the Bambino Gesù hospital.
Subsequently, the general manager of Dassault Falcon Service, monsieur Jean Kayanakis, and the director of customer relations and field service, monsieur Eloi Dufour, who have always provided the necessary technical assistance for the full operation of the aircraft in collaboration with the Aircraft Efficiency Section. of the 31st Wing.
Exciting videos were also projected during the event that told the incessant activity of the Falcon 50 during these 30 years in the service of the country.
The ceremony ended with the visit of the numerous guests to the photographic exhibition and the static display of the aircraft in sanitary configuration.
The Falcon 50 of the 31 ° Stormo is used in hospital and humanitarian flights in favor of our compatriots all over the world and in state transport. Both of these institutional tasks are carried out in concert with the other fixed-wing assets under the Stormo: the Falcon 900 in the two EX and EASY versions and the Airbus 319 CJ. During 2014, the 31 ° Stormo aircraft transported 345 patients for a total of 1012 flight hours.
See also DO's interview with the 31 ° Stormo
Source: 31 ° Stormo - Ciampino (RM) - chap. Ida Casetti
