No evidence of pilot suicide: SilkAir lawyers
No evidence of pilot suicide: SilkAir lawyers
SINGAPORE (Reuters): Lawyers for SilkAir told a Singapore court on Wednesday there was no evidence from two reports to indicate pilot suicide as the cause of a 1997 crash.
Families of six of the 104 people who died are suing the regional carrier for damages over the crash of Flight MI 185, which plunged into the Musi River on the Indonesian island of Sumatra en route from Jakarta to Singapore on December 19, 1997.
"There was speculation -- which the defendants say was entirely false, malicious and highly irresponsible -- that the crash was the result of deliberate action on the part of the pilot, Captain Tsu Way Ming," SilkAir's lawyer Lok Vi Ming said in his opening statement on Wednesday.
Air traffic controllers received no distress call and investigators later found the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder on the Boeing 737-300 had stopped recording minutes before the plane went down -- prompting rumors of pilot suicide.
Plaintiffs' lawyer Michael Khoo had painted a picture of an aircraft that was deliberately put into a nose-dive by the pilot in the hearing that started last week.
Indonesia's National Transportation Safety Committee (NTSC) said in its official crash report in December that the highly fragmented wreckage "yielded no evidence to explain the cause of the accident".
The NTSC report and a separate investigation by the Singapore police to determine if any of the deceased crew had suicidal tendencies found no such evidence, Lok said.
He said with 27 percent or 13 tons of the wreckage unrecovered, there was too little evidence to show that the flight recorders had been manually disabled, or that the plane was intentionally set to nose-dive.
Lok said that suits filed by the plaintiffs against Boeing and other aircraft part manufacturers in the United States also contradicted the local case.
"The plaintiffs'...United States' actions must be taken as admissions of their belief that the crash is, or at the very least may be, the result of causes other than intentional pilot action," Lok said. "Such actions...run counter to the plaintiffs' claim here."
The plaintiffs had relied on comments made by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) to back their argument that the crash was due to the pilot rather than a mechanical malfunction.
In a cross-examination on Tuesday, SilkAir lawyers highlighted that the NTSB had amended their conclusions on three previous plane crashes as new evidence surfaced.
"Three final verdict reverses in the last 10 years show that the NTSB conclusions may not in some cases be that final," Lok told Supreme Court Justice Tan Lee Meng.
The plaintiffs seek more than the $200,000 compensation offered by SilkAir, which is wholly owned by Singapore Airlines. Most families have accepted the compensation, which bars them from further legal action.