![](https://bydanjohnson.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/2178_2.jpg)
We lost one of the good ones recently. You may not have met or even know this man, but you certainly know — and may absolutely love — the airplanes he created. We say a sad and final farewell to Professor Luigi “Gino” Pascale. While it is somewhat melancholy to bid farewell to this man of short stature but giant achievements, he did what he loved for seven decades and until very near the time of his death. None of us can ask for much more than that. Luigi is also succeeded by family members who continue to run and expand the operation he began with his brother Giovanni so many years ago. Officially he was chief preliminary design officer of Costruzioni Aeronautiche Tecnam but Tecnam team members remember him fondly as the heart and soul of Tecnam. He was 93 at his passing. Professor Luigi — as I heard several Tecnam employees refer to him — got his start in aviation designing model airplanes way back in the 1930s.