3 tourists among 4 killed after Italian cable car crashes into a ravine south of Naples

ROME (AP) — Three tourists, including a British couple, were among four people who were killed when a mountain cable car plunged into a ravine south of Naples, officials confirmed Saturday.

Britain's Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said in a statement that it is "supporting the families of a British couple who have died in Italy and are in touch with the local authorities.”

On Friday, a day after the accident, a spokesperson for the mayor of Vico Equense had said that the pair were siblings, but confirmed Saturday that that was based on bad information.

An Israeli woman was the third foreign victim to be identified following Thursday's accident.

The fourth victim was the Italian driver of the cable car. A fifth tourist, said to be the brother of the Israeli victim, is in a stable but critical condition at a Naples hospital, officials said.

Initial reports suggested that a traction cable may have snapped as the cable car ascended Monte Faito, in the town of Castellammare di Stabia. The cable car plunged into a ravine after stopping very close to the station at the top of the peak, at around 1,050 meters (3,400 feet).

Sixteen passengers were helped out of another cable car that was stuck mid-air near the foot of the mountain following the incident.

The accident happened just a week after the cable car, which is popular for its views of Mount Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples, reopened for the season. It averages around 110,000 visitors each year.

The emergency services, including Italy’s alpine rescue, more than 50 firefighters, police and civil protection personnel, worked into the evening in severe weather conditions, with fog and strong winds making rescue operations difficult.

“The traction cable broke. The emergency brake downstream worked, but evidently not the one on the cabin that was entering the station," Luigi Vicinanza, the mayor of Castellammare di Stabia, said on Thursday. He added that there had been regular safety checks on the cable car line, which runs 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) from the town to the top of the mountain.

Local prosecutors have opened an investigation into possible manslaughter, which will involve an inspection of the cable stations, the pylons, the two cabins and the cable, officials said Friday.

The company running the service, the EAV public transport firm, said the seasonal cable car had reopened with all the required safety conditions.

“The reopening had taken place a week ago after three months of tests every day, day and night," said EAV President Umberto De Gregorio. "This is something inexplicable.”

De Gregorio said technical experts believed there was no connection between the severe weather and the cause of the crash. "There is an automatic system. When the wind exceeds a certain level, the cable car stops automatically,” he said.

The Monte Faito cable car opened in 1952. Four people died in 1960 when a pylon broke.

Italy has recorded two similar fatal accidents involving cable cars in recent years.

A cable car crash in May 2021 in northern Italy killed 14 people, including six Israelis, among them a family of four. In 1998, a low-flying U.S. military jet cut through the cable of a ski lift in Cavalese, in the Dolomites, killing 20 people.

In this photo released by the Italian Alpine and Speleological Rescue Corps on Friday, April 18, 2025, rescuers reach for the smashed gondola of the Mt. Faito cablecar near Naples in southern Italy connecting Castellammare di Stabia to the top of Mt. Faito, that was carrying tourists, on Thursday when the cable snapped, killing at least four people and injuring one. (Soccorso Alpino e Speleologico via AP, HO)

In this photo released by the Italian Alpine and Speleological Rescue Corps on Friday, April 18, 2025, rescuers reach for the smashed gondola of the Mt. Faito cablecar near Naples in southern Italy connecting Castellammare di Stabia to the top of Mt. Faito, that was carrying tourists, on Thursday when the cable snapped, killing at least four people and injuring one. (Soccorso Alpino e Speleologico via AP, HO)

In this photo released by the Italian Alpine and Speleological Rescue Corps on Friday, April 18, 2025, rescuers reach for the smashed gondola of the Mt. Faito cablecar near Naples in southern Italy connecting Castellammare di Stabia to the top of Mt. Faito, that was carrying tourists, on Thursday when the cable snapped, killing at least four people and injuring one. (Soccorso Alpino e Speleologico via AP, HO)

In this photo released by the Italian Alpine and Speleological Rescue Corps on Friday, April 18, 2025, rescuers reach for the smashed gondola of the Mt. Faito cablecar near Naples in southern Italy connecting Castellammare di Stabia to the top of Mt. Faito, that was carrying tourists, on Thursday when the cable snapped, killing at least four people and injuring one. (Soccorso Alpino e Speleologico via AP, HO)

In this photo released by the Italian Alpine and Speleological Rescue Corps on Friday, April 18, 2025, rescuers reach for the smashed gondola of the Mt. Faito cablecar near Naples in southern Italy connecting Castellammare di Stabia to the top of Mt. Faito, that was carrying tourists, on Thursday when the cable snapped, killing at least four people and injuring one. (Soccorso Alpino e Speleologico via AP, HO)

In this photo released by the Italian Alpine and Speleological Rescue Corps on Friday, April 18, 2025, rescuers reach for the smashed gondola of the Mt. Faito cablecar near Naples in southern Italy connecting Castellammare di Stabia to the top of Mt. Faito, that was carrying tourists, on Thursday when the cable snapped, killing at least four people and injuring one. (Soccorso Alpino e Speleologico via AP, HO)

View of the Monte Faito cable car departure station in Castellammare di Stabia near Naples, southern Italy, Friday, April 18, 2025, with the cabin from which nine passengers were rescued when the traction cable broke Thursday, killing four people in another cabin that fell further up the mountain. (AP Photo/Salvatore Laporta)

In this photo released by the Italian Alpine and Speleological Rescue Corps on Friday, April 18, 2025, rescuers reach for the smashed gondola of the Mt. Faito cablecar near Naples in southern Italy connecting Castellammare di Stabia to the top of Mt. Faito, that was carrying tourists, on Thursday when the cable snapped, killing at least four people and injuring one. (Soccorso Alpino e Speleologico via AP, HO)

View of the Monte Faito cable car departure station in Castellammare di Stabia near Naples, southern Italy, Friday, April 18, 2025, with the cabin from which nine passengers were rescued when the traction cable broke Thursday, killing four people in another cabin that fell further up the mountain. (AP Photo/Salvatore Laporta)

View of the Monte Faito cable car departure station in Castellammare di Stabia near Naples, southern Italy, Friday, April 18, 2025, with the cabin from which nine passengers were rescued when the traction cable broke Thursday, killing four people in another cabin that fell further up the mountain. (AP Photo/Salvatore Laporta)

A cable car carrying tourists south of Naples has crashed after the cable snapped, killing at least four people and injuring one in Castellamare di Stabia, near Naples, Italy, Thursday, April 17, 2025. (Alessandro Garofalo/LaPresse via AP)

Rescuers recoup the body of one of the victims of a cable car carrying tourists south of Naples which crashed after the cable snapped, killing at least four people and injuring one in Castellamare di Stabia, near Naples, Italy, Thursday, April 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Salvatore Laporta)

Rescuers recoup the body of one of the victims of a cable car carrying tourists south of Naples which crashed after the cable snapped, killing at least four people and injuring one in Castellamare di Stabia, near Naples, Italy, Thursday, April 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Salvatore Laporta)

Rescuers recoup the body of one of the victims of a cable car carrying tourists south of Naples which crashed after the cable snapped, killing at least four people and injuring one in Castellamare di Stabia, near Naples, Italy, Thursday, April 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Salvatore Laporta)

In this photo released by the Italian Alpine and Speleological Rescue Corps on Thursday, April 17, 2025, rescuers reach for the smashed gondola of the Mt. Faito cablecar near Naples in southern Italy.

New Jersey Transit train engineers went on strike Friday, leaving an estimated 350,000 commuters in New Jersey and New York City to seek other means to reach their destinations or consider staying home.

Groups of picketers gathered in front of transit headquarters in Newark and at the Hoboken Terminal, carrying signs that said “Locomotive Engineers on Strike” and “NJ Transit: Millions for Penthouse Views Nothing for Train Crews.” Passing drivers honked their horns.

The walkout comes after the latest round of negotiations on Thursday didn’t produce an agreement. It is the state’s first transit strike in more than 40 years and comes a month after union members overwhelmingly rejected a labor agreement with management.

“We presented them the last proposal; they rejected it and walked away with two hours left on the clock," said Tom Haas, general chairman of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen.

NJ Transit CEO Kris Kolluri described the situation as a “pause in the conversations.”

“I certainly expect to pick back up these conversations as soon as possible,” he said late Thursday during a joint news conference with New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy. “If they’re willing to meet tonight, I’ll meet them again tonight. If they want to meet tomorrow morning, I’ll do it again. Because I think this is an imminently workable problem. The question is, do they have the willingness to come to a solution.”

Murphy said it was important to “reach a final deal that is both fair to employees and at the same time affordable to New Jersey’s commuters and taxpayers.”

"Again, we cannot ignore the agency’s fiscal realities,” Murphy said.

The announcement came after 15 hours of nonstop contract talks, according to the union.

NJ Transit — the nation’s third-largest transit system — operates buses and rail in the state, providing nearly 1 million weekday trips, including into New York City. The walkout halts all NJ Transit commuter trains, which provide heavily used public transit routes between New York City’s Penn Station on one side of the Hudson River and communities in northern New Jersey on the other, as well as the Newark airport, which has grappled with unrelated delays of its own recently.

The agency had announced contingency plans in recent days, saying it planned to increase bus service, but warned riders that the buses would only add “very limited” capacity to existing New York commuter bus routes in close proximity to rail stations and would not start running until Monday. The agency also will contract with private carriers to operate bus service from key regional park-and-ride locations during weekday peak periods.

However, the agency noted that the buses would not be able to handle close to the same number of passengers — only about 20% of current rail customers — so it urged people who could work from home to do so.

Even the threat of it had already caused travel disruptions. Amid the uncertainty, the transit agency canceled train and bus service for Shakira concerts Thursday and Friday at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.

The parties met Monday with a federal mediation board in Washington to discuss the matter, and a mediator was present during Thursday’s talks. Kolluri said Thursday night that the mediation board has suggested a Sunday morning meeting to resume talks.

Wages have been the main sticking point of the negotiations between the agency and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen that wants to see its members earn wages comparable to other passenger railroads in the area. The union says its members earn an average salary of $113,000 a year and says an agreement could be reached if agency CEO Kris Kolluri agrees to an average yearly salary of $170,000.

NJ Transit leadership, though, disputes the union’s data, saying the engineers have average total earnings of $135,000 annually, with the highest earners exceeding $200,000.

Kolluri and Murphy said Thursday night that the problem isn’t so much whether both sides can agree to a wage increase, but whether they can do so under terms that wouldn’t then trigger other unions to demand similar increases and create a financially unfeasible situation for NJ Transit.

Congress has the power to intervene and block the strike and force the union to accept a deal, but lawmakers have not shown a willingness to do that this time like they did in 2022 to prevent a national freight railroad strike.

The union has seen steady attrition in its ranks at NJ Transit as more of its members leave to take better-paying jobs at other railroads. The number of NJ Transit engineers has shrunk from 500 several months ago to about 450 today.

Associated Press reporters Hallie Golden in Seattle and Josh Funk in Omaha, Nebraska, contributed to this report.

An NJ Transit train pulls into the Secaucus Junction station in Secaucus, N.J., Wednesday, May 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

An electronic display advises commuters of potential NJ Transit service disruptions at the Secaucus Junction station in Secaucus, N.J., Wednesday, May 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Union members from the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen form a picket line outside the NJ Transit Headquarters on Friday, May 16, 2025 in Newark, New Jersey. (AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah)

Union members from the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen form a picket line outside the NJ Transit Headquarters on Friday, May 16, 2025 in Newark, New Jersey. (AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah)