A student pilot, aged 22, was forced to land a light aircraft on her own after her flying instructor reportedly leapt to his death mid-flight in Argentina. The instructor, 42-year-old Leandro Bertazzo, is said to have opened the cockpit door of a Cessna C-150 and jumped while the pair were training, leaving the trainee — who holds a licence but has few flying hours — to bring the plane down unaided. The incident highlights both the trauma faced by the student and the composure required to land safely in an extreme emergency.

According to the director of the Flying Parrot Cordoba flight school, Eduardo Alvarez, Bertazzo calmly removed his headphones, arranged his belongings, unfastened his seatbelt and opened the difficult-to-open door before jumping, telling the student, "You know what to do, keep moving forward." She managed to land the aircraft safely at Coronel Olmedo Airport, from where they had taken off, and alerted the authorities. Bertazzo, who described himself online as a former commercial pilot in Chile, was found dead in a field around 20 minutes later, in the area the student had identified as his likely fall site. Investigators are examining the circumstances of his death.