Six Indonesians killed in air crash in Hong Kong
JAKARTA (Agencies): Six Indonesians were killed and six others injured when a Hercules transport plane belonging to the private operator Pelita Air Service plunged into the harbor at Kai Tak airport, officials said.
In Jakarta, a Pelita spokesman confirmed that the plane had been on its way home to Jakarta on Friday after flying refugees from Hong Kong to Vietnam for the United Nations.
"Six personnel are dead and six others are injured and are being treated at a hospital," the spokesman told The Jakarta Post.
He said all 12 people on board were crew members. The six dead were identified as captains Soenoto and Adisuryo, flight engineer Bambang Aryono, load master Zarmis, mechanic Eldon Karta Siahaan and copilot Bambang Sukomartono.
Relatives of the crew waited in anguish into the early hours at Pelita's command post at Halim Perdanakusuma airport on Friday for news of the fate of their loved ones. Some could not stand the suspense and sent their neighbors instead.
Many broke into tears, some hysterically, when they found out that their relatives were among the casualties.
The airliner arranged to fly the wives and relatives of all the victims to Hong Kong yesterday. They are expected to be flown back to Jakarta with the six injured and the bodies today.
In Hong Kong, a government information service statement said that the four-engine plane crashed at 7:15 p.m. on Friday (11:15 GMT). Its last contact with air traffic controllers was its clearance for take off, according to AFP.
"Shortly after take off it veered to the right and entered the water," Hong Kong government deputy director of aviation Richard Siegel said.
The propeller-driven aircraft, which had landed in Hong Kong after being used earlier to forcibly repatriate Vietnamese boat people to Hanoi, was about 60 meters above the runway when it veered off course and slammed into the water of a typhoon shelter in Victoria Harbor.
Albert Chan, a fire department senior divisional commander, said at a briefing that the plane "was broken into a few pieces." Only part of the aircraft's tail and wing were visible after it crashed.
It was being leased by HeavyLift Cargo Airlines Ltd, a unit of Britain's Trafalgar House Plc.
The airport, with its single runway jutting into the harbor off densely populated Kowloon, was closed for two hours following the accident. Fifty-two outbound flights and 39 incoming flights were delayed and two others canceled.
A spokesman for the Civil Aviation Authority said it was too early to speculate on the cause of the accident, and that the plane's in-flight recorder would have to be salvaged as part of an investigation into the crash.
The fatal crash is the third time in six years an aircraft has skated off the single runway at Hong Kong's aging airport and into the harbor, according to Reuters.
Last year a Taiwanese China Air Lines plane skidded off Hong Kong's runway and plunged into the sea in bad weather. However the plane only partially sank and there were no serious injuries.
In 1989, a Trident operated by China's CAAC plunged off the runway into Kowloon Bay in 1988, killing six crew and one passenger. Cramped Kai Tak, which dates from before World War Two, has one of the world's busiest runways, sandwiched between the harbor and the teeming high-rise housing estates of Kowloon City.
But the airport has remained relatively free of serious accidents. (als/rms/emb)