Taiwanese investigators have completed a preliminary draft report on the crash of a Singapore Airlines jet that took off on the wrong runway and slammed into construction equipment, killing 83 people, an official said yesterday.
The report -- which does not include probable causes of the accident last October at Taipei's airport -- was sent to US, Australian and Singaporean agencies that helped with the probe, said Kay Yong (
The assisting foreign agencies have been asked to comment on the draft report before Nov. 1, Yong said. A final report that describes the causes of the crash, contributing factors and recommendations should be finished by January or February next year, Yong said.
"What we have in the preliminary report is 90 percent of the final report," said Yong, managing director of Taiwan's Aviation Safety Council.
Yong said Taiwanese investigators have preliminary explanations of what caused the accident, but they don't want to publish their conclusions until they have evaluated the comments of other investigators.
The investigator refused to discuss what Taiwanese officials believe caused the crash of Flight SQ006, and the preliminary draft report was not released to the public.
The pilots of the Los Angeles-bound jumbo jet tried to take off last Oct. 31 in a heavy rainstorm caused by an approaching typhoon. The airstrip they used was closed and blocked by construction debris and equipment, including two large mechanical shovels.
The Boeing 747-400 slammed into the equipment and burst into flames.
Last February, Taiwanese investigators released a report that said that the pilots told the tower five times they believed they were on the correct runway. The pilots were also warned in a preflight briefing report that the runway was closed, the report said.
However, the report also painted a troubling picture of Taipei's airport. Lights were broken and markers were missing for the runway that should have been used by the Singapore Airlines jet.
Singapore Airlines has long been considered one of the world's safest airlines.
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