Ex-RAF pilot David Ashley killed when his military training jet crashed in Italy
A pilot who was killed on a training flight over mountains in Italy has been named as a British father-of-two from Dorset who had already survived an earlier plane crash.
Experienced pilot David Ashley, 49, (pictured with his wife Heather) was in a Leonardo jet when it crashed in snow covered mountains north of Lake Como, Mail Online has learned.
The M-346 trainer aircraft went down near the town of Colico in Lombardy at approximately 12:00pm yesterday afternoon. Two pilots ejected the plane before it crashed at an altitude of about 8,200 feet and caught fire on the Lecco mountainside.
Former RAF pilot Mr Ashley, who is understood to have with an Italian pilot at the time, was killed in the incident but his colleague, named as Giampaolo Goattin, survived and is not thought to have been seriously injured. It’s not clear if Mr Ashley or Giampaolo Goattin was at the controls of the aircraft at the time it crashed.
Former RAF pilot David Ashley, 49, with his wife Heather in 2019. The couple have two sons