Boeing faces court battle over SilkAir plane crash

Boeing faces court battle over SilkAir plane crash

SINGAPORE (Agencies): Thirty-one families of victims from a
1997 SilkAir plane crash will take action against aircraft
manufacturer Boeing in U.S. courts in a bid to find out what
happened on the doomed flight, the Sunday Times reported on
Sunday.

Boeing staff would hold key information relating to the
aircraft's maintenance, said American lawyer Benton Musslewhite,
referring to the crash of SilkAir flight MI185 on Dec. 19,
1997, where all 104 people on board died.

Musslewhite said his team of engineers would analyze reports
from the Indonesian National Transportation Safety Committee
(NTSC), the US National Transportation Safety Board and Singapore
police in a bid to determine the cause of the crash.

"Hopefully, the pre-trial will begin end of next year, and if
all goes well, the trial could start in 2002," he said, adding
the families wanted closure.

"They want to know what went wrong, what caused the crash, and
that is something, I think, which no one has been able to give
them."

The NTSC-led probe into the crash of the Boeing 737 said last
Thursday it was unable to find a reason for why the plane plunged
35,000 feet into an Indonesian river. It ruled out the theory of
deliberate pilot action due to insufficient evidence.

The Singapore-bound flight was flying from Jakarta.

Singapore police, who had opened a suicide-murder
investigation, said they had closed their inquiry after finding
no evidence of suicidal tendencies among the crew. SilkAir is a
subsidiary of Singapore Airlines Ltd.

A Singapore government-linked newspaper claimed last Saturday
conclusions by U.S. aviation investigators that pilot suicide
probably caused a 1997 SilkAir crash was likely biased because
the airplane was made by U.S. company Boeing Co.

The Straits Times said in an editorial that this month's U.S.
National Transportation Safety Board report raised questions
about "nationalistic bias."

The nearly new Boeing 737-300 crashed into an Indonesian river
on Dec. 19, 1997, killing all 104 people aboard. The Singapore-
bound flight plunged into the river from 10,700 meters shortly
after leaving Jakarta, Indonesia's capital.

Both the U.S. report and a separate Indonesian report
concluded that the voice and data recorders in the cockpit were
turned off minutes before the crash and that the plane's
stabilizer was inexplicably set to dive.

But the U.S. aviation board said the Indonesians failed to
analyze personal information about the Singaporean pilot, Tsu Way
Ming, that may have shed light on the crash. It noted Tsu had
significant debts from playing the stock market and that he had
been reprimanded by airline management several times in the weeks
before the crash.

Indonesian and Singaporean authorities said they conducted
thorough investigations of Tsu's personal life and that he was
not suicidal.

After nearly three years and 30,000 man hours, the final
Indonesian report said investigators were unable to determine the
cause "due to the highly fragmented wreckage and the nearly total
lack of useful data, information and evidence."

The report also said mechanical problems could not be ruled
out because almost a quarter of the aircraft was lost in the
jungle river. The U.S. report, however, absolved Boeing of any
blame.

The Straits Times editorial said it was noteworthy that the
Indonesian and U.S. authorities disagreed on the two key points.
"(The U.S. report) was heavy on inference and based on the
observation that insufficient weight had been given to the 'human
factors'," the editorial said.