Museo per la Memoria di Ustica (Itavia Flight 870)
On June 27, 1980, an Itavia DC-9 carrying 81 people fell into the Tyrrhenian Sea. In 2013, Italy's civil Court of Cassation held the missile thesis amply reasoned, while the criminal courts acquitted the generals tried for concealment and no trial for the crash itself has produced a conviction. On October 2, 2026, a judge sent the inquiry back to prosecutors after France offered documents.
Field Guide Entry
The flight and the wreck
The Itavia DC-9 left Bologna for Palermo on June 27, 1980, with 77 passengers and 4 crew. The captain radioed Rome Control at 8:56pm, and the aircraft left Rome's radar screens at 8:59pm. Wreckage was sighted at 7:05am the next day, and searchers later recovered 39 bodies. The wreck was raised from the seabed in operations that began in the 1980s and went on display here, reassembled, on June 27, 2007.
The competing explanations
Early theories were structural failure, a bomb, or a missile. In 1984, the investigating judge, Vittorio Bucarelli, commissioned a new expert report from a group coordinated by the engineer Massimo Blasi. It endorsed the missile thesis in March 1989, and in spring 1990 two of its five experts changed their view and favored a bomb.
Priore and the generals
Bucarelli resigned in July 1990 after Giuliano Amato, a former prime minister, accused him of lying, and Rosario Priore took over. Priore's 4,969-page ordinance of August 31, 1999, reconstructed a scenario of military action and sent nine people to trial, among them four Air Force generals charged with attacks on constitutional bodies.
On December 15, 2005, the Rome appeal court acquitted two of the generals, Lamberto Bartolucci and Franco Ferri, because "il fatto non sussiste." The Court of Cassation made that final on January 10, 2007. The appeal court wrote that no aircraft had crossed the DC-9's route and that the radar tapes were intact. No criminal trial over the crash itself has produced a conviction.
What the civil courts found
In a ruling decided on November 13, 2012, and filed on January 28, 2013, the Court of Cassation dismissed the main appeal of the Defence and Transport ministries in a suit by victims' relatives. It called the missile thesis accepted by the Palermo appeal court "abbondantemente e congruamente motivata," amply and adequately reasoned. The finding belongs to a civil case, and the judgment names no one who fired. On October 22, 2013, in a suit by the heirs of Itavia's owner, the court treated the cover-up of the investigation as established.
The MiG and the radar
A Libyan MiG-23 and its dead pilot were found on the Sila plateau in Calabria on July 18, 1980. The 2005 appeal court held that it fell that day, three weeks after Ustica, and called a link to the DC-9 false.
Courts obtained radar tracks from Ciampino, Marsala, Licola, and Poggio Ballone. According to Il Post, they show the DC-9 and its debris falling, with no sign of other aircraft, and most experts found no deletion. On October 2, 1997, NATO gave the Italian government a six-page report. Il Post says it identified twelve fighters in the area, all American and British, and left one aircraft carrier and four other aircraft without national flags. Paris says flights from its base at Solenzara in Corsica ended that afternoon, and Rome prosecutors have long held that the base was operating after 5pm.
France and the United States
On September 2, 2023, Amato told La Repubblica that a French missile fired in an attempt on Muammar Gaddafi was "the most credible version," and he acknowledged having no hard proof. France has denied that its aircraft were over Ustica.
2026
On June 27, 2026, the government announced through the State Attorney's Office that it would oppose a request by Rome prosecutors to close the inquiry. On September 30, chief prosecutor Francesco Lo Voi withdrew the request, saying French cooperation opened "nuove prospettive di indagine." On October 2, the investigating judge, Livio Sabatini, returned the file to prosecutors and ordered new inquiries that can end either in confirmation of the archiving or in a prosecution.
Visiting Information
Entry is free. From late September to June 26, the museum opens Thursday and Friday from 9:30am to 1:30pm and Saturday and Sunday from 10am to 6:30pm, and it is closed Monday through Wednesday. In summer, from June 27, it opens Friday, Saturday, and Sunday from 5pm to 8pm. These are the hours on the museum's own contacts page, which also lists extra openings on particular Sundays, so it is best practice to check it before a trip.
The reassembled DC-9 stands inside Christian Boltanski's installation of 81 lights, mirrors, and speakers whispering sentences, beside black crates that hold the passengers' belongings. The museum was set up with the Association of the Relatives of the Victims.
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