Relatives mull legal action after inconclusive crash probe

Relatives mull legal action after inconclusive crash probe

SINGAPORE (Agencies): Relatives of victims from a 1997 SilkAir plane crash on Friday sought legal advice, saying they felt frustrated and disappointed that the three-year investigation into the tragedy had proven inconclusive.

The crash report, released Thursday, could not explain why the Boeing 737 plunged 35,000 feet into a South Sumatra river, and said there was no concrete evidence to support the theory of deliberate pilot action.

"The inconclusive report was the worst possible scenario," said Aaron Ng, whose girlfriend Claudia Teo was a stewardess on the flight.

"There are hardly any findings at all. There are no straight answers from Professor Diran," Ng said in a Straits Times report on Friday.

Shortly after taking off from Jakarta on Dec. 19, 1997, the almost new Singapore-bound Boeing 737-300 fell 10,500 meters into a river near Palembang.

Oetarjo Diran, who chaired the Indonesian-led inquiry, said the crash investigation yielded little useful data.

The cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder stopped inexplicably before the aircraft plunged, the horizontal stabilizer trim was inexplicably in the position for an aircraft to be nose-down, and there was no evidence of weather, mechanical or maintenance problems as possible causes of the tragedy.

Singapore officials have said they accepted the report's findings. SilkAir is a subsidiary of Singapore Airlines.

Controversy also stems from the fact that U.S. investigators concluded that pilot suicide likely caused the SilkAir crash, contradicting findings by Indonesian authorities.

AP reported that in a Dec. 11 letter to Indonesian investigators, U.S. National Transportation Safety Board chairman Jim Hall said there was nothing wrong with the Boeing 737 and "the accident can be explained by intentional pilot action."

"The evidence suggests that the cockpit voice recorder was intentionally disconnected," the letter said, adding that the pilot could have reversed the plane's nose dive but that it was "not attempted."

A separate report from the U.S. board argued that the plane could not have acted as it did without deliberate action from the pilot.

"It is very likely from the time it departed from cruise flight until the end of the recorded data that the airplane was responding to sustained flight control inputs from the cockpit," the report said, rebutting the Indonesian claims.

The report said wreckage showed the plane's engines were set to high power and that controls were set to a "nose-down" position.

Singapore police and Indonesia's National Transportation Safety Committee on Thursday issued separate statements saying Singaporean pilot Tsu Way Ming showed no suicidal tendencies.

The investigation was dogged by speculation that Tsu, an ex- fighter pilot with the Singapore Air Force, may have locked his partner out of the cockpit, disabled the recorders and deliberately crashed the plane.

The U.S. board said Tsu "was experiencing significant financial difficulties" and that the pilot had been reprimanded by airline management several times in the weeks before the crash. It said the Indonesian report failed to analyze information about the pilot's financial debts, calling the omission "disappointing."

Even though the plane crashed in Indonesia, the United States was asked to participate in the investigation because the plane was made by Seattle-based Boeing Co.

David Beevers, chairman of the Families of SilkAir MI185 Association, said he was "truly disappointed" with the final report.

"It has been three years and there is still no closure to the whole incident," said Beevers whose wife died in the crash.

An American lawyer Benton Musslewhite, who arrived in Singapore three days ago, met with the families of several victims after the report was released to discuss claims for damages.

"When a plane crashes it has to have a reason to do so," he said.

The families are likely to take action against SilkAir and Boeing in a U.S. civil court, the Business Times reported.

Boeing is already a principal defendant in actions brought by relatives of more than 50 of the 104 crash victims.

Some relatives said their only motive for legal action was to learn the truth about the crash.

"Nobody wants to talk about compensation nowadays. We simply want to know how it all happened," said one man whose brother was on the flight.

Evelyn Tsu, the wife of the flight captain, said she had not yet decided on legal action but was relieved that her husband had been cleared.

"I have been waiting for this for so long," she said, having endured three years of rumors and allegations that her husband brought down the plane deliberately.

"It has been a long, painful wait ... but I don't know if my heart can ever heal," she told the Straits Times.

The SilkAir jet went down on the 18th anniversary of a multiple air crash when four of Tsu's friends were killed on Dec. 19, 1979 during Singapore Air Force training in the Philippines.

Tsu's fighter plane had a technical problem and he did not take off with the others.

"Four of his friends died when their planes hit the face of a mountain," Evelyn Tsu said.

"They were among his closest friends ... It was hard for him to lose them. Despite this it did not deter him from flying."

AFP reported that Singapore police, who had opened a suicide- murder investigation into the SilkAir crash, said: "Those who knew Tsu had not observed any unusual emotions or behavior in relation to the Dec. 19 date."

The police said they had closed their inquiry after "finding no evidence that the pilot, co-pilot or any crew member had suicidal tendencies or a motive to deliberately cause the crash."