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Singapore: Reports Fails To Elucidate Flight SQ006 Crash In Taiwan
KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 24 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A much-awaited report on the findings of flight SQ006, the Los Angeles-bound Singapore Airlines plane that crashed into runway construction equipment in Taiwan killing 83 people, was released on Friday.
The report, however, failed to place responsibility for the crash upon any factor, although investigators uncovered some facts that have dispelled several theories arising concerning the crash.
Investigators now know, almost for sure, what the pilots on the fatal flight saw on the night they lined the jet up on the wrong runway, before the plane tried to take off.
The report has dismissed, for instance, aircraft failure as a possibility, as well as theories suggesting the pilot was anxious to take off in the bad weather that night, or speculations about health or financial problems the pilots faced.
It also left other facts open to the wildest interpretation since the investigators have refrained from commenting on the significance of these facts. Two pressing questions remains unsolved however.
First, why did the pilots take the closed runway and why were they not warned when this happened?
Aviation experts and pilots had slammed the airport for ignoring international practices when they closed runway 05R and started construction work on it, turning it into a disaster in the waiting, they claimed.
Responding to criticism, Taiwanese airport authorities blamed the pilots for the mistake, adding that the airport's lights were bright enough to see where they were on the tarmac.
Family members of the victims had been outraged that the pilots took off in extremely bad weather, but pilots around the world said that was normal practice in the aviation industry.
The Singaporean pilots, who survived the crash, said the taxiway lights misled them. Captain Foong Chee Kong had to pilot the Boeing 747-400 along a taxiway that led to his assigned runway, 05L. To the right of the taxiway were entrances to two runways, 05R followed by 05L.
Like other pilots familiar with the layout of Chiang Kai-shek International Airport, he knew that he would have to taxi to the end of this path before taking the second right turn onto 05L.
At the first entrance - to 05R - he should have seen two sets of green lights, one bending right onto 05R, and another continuing straight.
But some of these lights that might have led him to the 05L runway were not visible on October 31st, the report said.
One was not working, and the other was dim, so the next visible light would have been 90 meters away.
Could Captain Foong have turned right here, thinking he had already reached the end of the taxiway is the second question that remains unanswered. The factual report observed that international practice calls for all lights to be monitored automatically.
Analysts believe that most of the questions left behind would be answered at the analysis stage of the inquiry into the crash.
There are indications that the pilot was erroneously given the impression that he was at the end of the taxiway.
One more crucial question, which has, unfortunately, not been answered categorically is whether the edge lights along the 05R stretch had misled the pilots altogether. These lights, if switched on, could have given the pilots the wrong impression that the strip of tarmac in front of them was an operational runway when it was, in fact, closed.
According to international practice, the white edge lights, painted runway markings and signs should have been removed when the airport closed off the runway, they said.
Indeed, when interviewed, the pilots recalled that the view from the cockpit before take-off looked "normal" to them, with no hint that the runway they were on was a closed one. Unfortunately, probe team chief Yong Kay has not been able to ascertain if the edge lights were indeed switched on that stormy night.
The final arguments in attempts to elucidate the mystery of the flight are why the traffic controllers did not warn the pilots of their mistake.
A conclusive argument would be that the bad weather had set the scene for disaster and that thanks to reduced visibility, ground traffic controllers were not able to spot the error.
The airport lacked ground radar and traffic controllers revealed they could not see SQ006 as it taxied on the wrong path.
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