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Aviation officials blame human error

Relatives of victims of the Singapore Airways crash pray in front of the wreckage of the plane on the runway of CKS airport in Taoyuan yesterday. PHOTO: TONY K. YAO, TAIPEI TIMES

The Aviation Safety Council (ASC, 飛安委員會), which is leading the investigation into the crash late Tuesday of Singapore Airlines flight SQ006, confirmed yesterday that the pilot had made the mistake of turning onto, and hence commencing takeoff, on the wrong runway, causing the aircraft to slam into objects and burst into flames.

Singapore Airlines accepted the preliminary finding and said it was "deeply sorry" for the "terrible tragedy."

"They were our pilots, it was our aircraft, the aircraft should not have been on that runway and ... we accept full responsibility," Cheong Choong Kong, deputy chairman and chief executive officer of Singapore Airlines said at a news conference at the city-state's airport.

Data from the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) and the flight data recorder (FDR) showed that the ground conditions at the airport in the poor weather, might have contributed to the tragedy, in which 81 of the 179 on board the flight, bound for Los Angeles, were killed.

The Boeing 747-400 jumbo jet burst into flames and crashed during takeoff at Chiang Kai-shek International Airport late Tuesday, as typhoon Xangsane pounded the island.

Kay Yong (戎凱), managing director of the ASC, yesterday made public parts of the conversation recorded by the CVR, saying that the pilot, having confirmed with the control tower that the runway was clear, had mistakenly turned into runway 5R, parallel to the runway 5L.

"The plane first slammed the Jersey barriers indicating the blocking of that part of the 5R runway that was under construction," said Yong.

The pilot, some crew members and survivors on board the ill-fated flight had reported that they felt the jet hit "something huge" before the accident broke the jet into three parts with an explosion. Two backhoes on the construction site were also destroyed by the jumbo jet.

The repair work on runway 5R began on Sept. 13 and is to be completed by Nov 12.

"We've got to understand what caused that error to be made and we will have to look at every contributory factor and understand how that mistake could have been made," Cheong said.

"It was obviously a pilot error; it was a human factor involved. We should also look to see whether safety features at airports are adequate."

Meanwhile, Prosecutor Song Kuo-yeh (宋國業) at the Taoyuan County district office which is involved in investigating the accident, confirmed that the jetliner had collided with construction machinery while taking off from 5R, the runway closed for repairs.

"It is very easy to see that the plane had wrongly taken the wrong runway, slamming into some steel objects and two mechanical backhoes there before exploding," Song said.

Signaling human error as a possible cause of the crash, the prosecutors' office in Taoyuan has barred the flight's pilot, Captain Foong Chee Kong, along with co-pilots Ng Kheng Leng and Latiff Cyrano from leaving the island pending further investigations, Song said.

On the other hand, to further confirm ground conditions in the poor weather at the airport is also considered a key element in the ASC's investigation, Yong said. The visibility of 500m to 600m due to the typhoon on the day of the accident rendered the aircraft out of sight of the control tower, the distance from the tower to the entrance of runway 5R being 1,500m, according to Yong. "Visual contact between the tower and the plane at that moment was impossible," he confirmed.

Yong said the tower could only understand the location of an airplane by communicating with the pilot to confirm vital data relating to the plane as CKS is not equipped with ground radar. Alfred Dickinson, US representative of the National Transportation Safety Board assisting in the ASC's investigation at the ASC' invitation, said that ground radar is not yet common in other countries, including the US "because economics and the certification of efficiency of such equipment is a problem."

The council is investigating whether the side lights of runway 5R were on. "Side lights should be switched off when a runway is used as a taxiway," said Yong. The front part of the 5R runway that is not included in current construction work, has been open for taxiing, the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA, 民航局) said. That is why the runway's entrance was not blocked by a barricade, according to the CAA.

Dickinson said it is logical for an airport to use the part of the runway spared from construction to direct traffic.

The side lights of runway 5R have the same color as those of runway 5L. But the former has green center lights while the latter's are white. The ASC said that they received conflicting reports from interviews with those involved or who witnessed the accident, while revealing that flight attendants on the flight said they saw these lights on from the window of the plane.

In addition, the council is investigating whether the pilot saw, or was able to see, the large letters painted in white on the tarmac of the runway indicating which way he was going.

Yong said notice to airlines about the construction on runway 5R was given out in September. But whether EVA Air, which operates as dispatcher for Singapore Airlines in Taipei, had fully informed the captain of the flight of the fact is still under investigation, he said.
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