www.nytimes.com/2000/11/01/world/01CND-CRASH.html -> www.nytimes.com/2000/11/01/world/01CND-CRASH.html?ex=1083643200&en=5e03a46253c2714d&ei=5070
Print this article Sponsored by November 1, 2000 Investigators Begin to Unravel Taiwan Crash By ERIK ECKHOLM T AIPEI, Taiwan, Thursday, Nov. Several theories arose about the captain's statement that he saw an object in his path and was unable to avoid hitting it before the giant Boeing 747 veered off the runway, split apart and was engulfed in flames. One theory under discussion is that high winds from the incoming typhoon might have blown a piece of construction equipment from an adjacent runway onto the path of Flight SQ006. But officials cautioned that it was too early to determine the cause of the crash. It seemed almost a miracle that more than 40 of the passengers and crew escaped with minor injuries, since the jumbo jet was ripped into three parts and its gushing fuel tanks quickly exploded. Many of those who were least injured were in the rear of the plane, which was spared the worst of the fires. Forty seven Americans were believed to be on board and at least 10 are confirmed dead, but only 22 Americans are known to have survived. On Wednesday, officials of the Taiwan Government and Singapore Airlines both rejected the charge, made by some angry relatives of crash victims, that the airline had been irresponsible to try and take off in the whipping typhoon gales Tuesday night, insisting that weather conditions were well within internationally accepted standards. Evidence so far suggests that the accelerating aircraft veered onto a parallel runway before erupting into a fireball, said Chou Kuan-Tsan of Taiwan's Aviation Safety Council at a news conference Wednesday evening. Chou said that three members of the cockpit crew, including the captain, were interviewed for three hours on Wednesday afternoon and that both the flight-data and voice recorders from the aircraft had been recovered in good condition. Investigators from the American Federal Aviation Administration, Boeing and Pratt and Whitney, the maker of the jet's engines, were en route to join experts from Singapore Airlines and local officials in a task force to try to determine the cause of the accident. The largest number of fatalities were Taiwanese, though citizens of numerous other countries were also on board. Dozens more people suffered severe burns or injuries and were being treated in nearby hospitals, and officials said the death toll could rise. On Wednesday morning as rescue workers removed the last of the bodies from the charred aircraft, scores of Taiwanese relatives of victims made the sad journey to a makeshift morgue, set up in an old hangar of Chiang Kai-shek International Airport, to identify remains. As anxious and grieving relatives sobbed, Buddhist monks chanted for the souls of the dead. Many of the bodies were badly burned and will have to be identified through DNA analysis, officials said. Singapore Airlines on Wednesday began flying relatives of victims to Taipei and said it would immediately provide each family with $25,000 in emergency aid. The aircraft was manufactured in 1997 and received major maintenance this fall with no signs of any problems, an airline official said. The fierce storm moving into Taipei as the plane began its takeoff Tuesday night led to speculation that sudden wind shifts might have caused it to founder. But officials noted that another jet had left successfully under seemingly identical conditions only minutes earlier and attention seemed to be shifting toward a collision with some object as a possible cause. He told investigators that he "saw an object on the runway and he tried to take off to avoid the object, and he hit the object," according to Rick Clements, a Singapore Airlines vice president who spoke with reporters in Singapore. Clements said the captain had not been able to identify the object. Television footage of the crash scene revealed burned heavy equipment including two earth excavators, but these may have been damaged after the jet careered off course and spewed forth its fuel. Because much of the wreckage was found on a runway adjacent to the approved takeoff route, which was under repair, some speculated that the pilot might have taken the wrong path in the poor visibility of the storm. Aviation Safety Council officials said, though, that voice recordings show the pilot correctly repeated the tower's instruction about which runway to use. Another Government aviation investigator, Chou Hsien-tsan, said officials were examining the two damaged earth excavators to reconstruct whether and where they had been directly struck. The typhoon hit northern Taiwan with full force on Wednesday morning, keeping the Taipei airport closed until mid-afternoon and causing major flooding and at least 32 deaths from drowning or mudslides.
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