The Bowdoin Orient

November 3, 2000
Volume CXXXII, Number 4

Singapore Airlines Jet Used Wrong Runway

By ERIK ECKHOLM with DANIEL J. WAKIN

TAIPEI, Taiwan -Singapore Airlines acknowledged Friday the pilot of a 747 that crashed on takeoff and killed 81 people had brought the plane down the wrong runway, and accepted responsibility for the accident. The runway in question, adjacent and parallel to the intended path, was closed for construction and littered with concrete blocks and heavy equipment at the time of the accident. It was also lit, though it was not supposed to be, which could have made a pilot error easier to occur in the dim visibility.

Officials said they were trying to determine whether the runway was lit by mistake. Singapore Airlines had denied until a statement issued Friday evening that its pilot made any error. It came to a new conclusion after hearing evidence collected by Taiwan's Aviation Safety Council. ``As unlikely as it seemed at first, the plane was on the wrong runway,'' said the airline's deputy chairman and chief executive, Cheong Choong Kong.

``We accept this finding,'' he said. ``It is critical that we understand exactly what happened and precisely what made the cockpit crew believe that they were on the correct runway,'' he said. At a separate news conference, he told reporters: ``They are our pilots. That was our aircraft. The aircraft should not be on that runway. We accept full responsibility,'' the Reuters news agency quoted him as saying. The pilot, who survived, said he had seen an object in front of the Boeing 747 jumbo jet just before lifting off and tried to avoid it but could not. The jet, carrying 159 passengers and 20 crew members, veered to the side, split into three pieces and burst into flames. At a news conference earlier Friday, Kay Yong, managing director of the Aviation Safety Council, said the pilot had not been sent to the wrong runway by the control tower, and believed he was on the correct one, according to The Associated Press. But he said it was too early in the investigation to conclude that the pilot was responsible for the crash.

A day earlier, Mr. Yong said it appeared the aircraft had been traveling straight ahead when it first made impact. And he confirmed that concrete blocks on the closed runway were hit by the plane. Earth excavators at the site were also mangled, but it was not yet clear at what point in the crash they were hit. Despite the fierce winds and poor visibility at the time of the crash, officials are adamant that the weather conditions at the airport met guidelines for takeoff. On Thursday, the death toll rose to 81 as two more severely burned victims died. At least 24 of the dead were Americans. Relatives of foreign victims continued to arrive in Taipei to undertake the grim task of identifying remains.

The bodies were moved Thursday evening from a makeshift morgue at the airport to a nearby county morgue. But many were too badly burned for identification and officials were taking blood samples from relatives to assist in DNA analysis. Thursday night, experts from the United States Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board were meeting with officials from Taiwan, Singapore and Boeing and from Pratt & Whitney, the engine maker, to examine the evidence on the crash.

Relatives of the victims of Tuesday's Singapore
Airlines jet crash stand beside remains of the jet
on Friday. The airline admitted the jet took off
from a runway closed for repairs.