Taiwan will release the pilots of a Singapore Airlines jet that crashed in October while taking off on the wrong runway, a prosecutor said yesterday.
The decision to allow the three men to go home on Dec. 15 came following numerous complaints from pilots, officials and crash investigators who argued that detaining the pilots for so long was unnecessary.
Taoyuan District prosecutor Song Keo-yeh (
But yesterday, Song said that the pilots would be released.
"When they are needed again for the investigation, Singapore's representative office in Taiwan has an obligation to return them to Taiwan," he said.
So far, crash investigators have confirmed that the plane crashed because the pilots tried to take off on a closed runway littered with construction equipment.
The investigation, which could take years, has not blamed the crash on pilot error and has not been able to explain why the pilots decided to use the wrong runway.
Taiwan's chief crash investigator, Yong Kai (戎凱) of the Aviation Safety Council (飛安委員會安), has been critical of the prosecutor's decision to detain the pilots for so long. Yong has argued that the pilots should be with their families in familiar surroundings.
On Thursday, a leader of the International Federation of Airline Pilots Associations said the pilots were being treated like criminals and being persecuted unnecessarily in Taiwan.
Captain Ryan Goh, president of the federation's Singapore chapter, said the group was considering an unprecedented boycott of Taiwan's airspace if the pilots were not freed soon.
The pilots involved in the crash were flight commander Captain Foong Chee Kong, 41, a Malaysian, and Singaporean co-pilots Latif Cyrano, 36, and Ng Kheng Leng, 38.
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