The Caproni Ca.48, owned and operated by the Caproni company and flown by two Italian military pilots, took off from the company's home airfield at Taliedo, a district of Milan, Italy, on Saturday, August 2, 1919, at 7:30 a.m. local time for a flight to Venice, where it arrived without incident at 9:22 a.m. After spending the day at Venice, the aircraft took off at 5:00 p.m. for the return flight to Taliedo.

Eyewitnesses reported that as the airliner passed near the airfield at Verona at an altitude of 3,000 feet (910 m), its wings seemed first to flutter and then to collapse entirely.

[3] The Ca.48, a large triplane, was an airliner conversion of the Caproni Ca.42 variant of the Caproni Ca.4 heavy bomber; such bombers had seen service with the air component of the Italian Royal Army during World War I in strikes against targets in Austria-Hungary, as well as with the British Royal Naval Air Service.

48 airliner conversion by removing all armament and mounting a double-deck cabin with large windows and seating for 23 passengers on the aircraft.

A source published five days after the accident claims that 14 people – the airliner's two pilots; five prominent Italian journalists, among them Tullo Morgagni;[6] and seven Caproni company mechanics – were on board.