S'pore court told SilkAir crash 'deliberate'
S'pore court told SilkAir crash 'deliberate'
SINGAPORE (Reuters): Lawyers representing the families of six killed in the 1997 crash of a SilkAir plane went to court in Singapore on Monday, painting a picture of an aircraft that was deliberately put into a nose-dive by the pilot.
Flight MI 185, en route to Singapore from Jakarta, plunged into the Musi River on December 19, 1997, killing all 104 aboard. Air traffic controllers received no distress call.
Indonesia's National Transportation Safety Committee said in a crash report in December that the highly fragmented wreckage "yielded no evidence to explain the cause of the accident".
In the first court case against SilkAir concerning the crash, lawyers brought six suits on behalf of five families claiming the US$200,000 per victim offered in compensation by the regional carrier was not enough.
Most victims' families have accepted the US$200,000 compensation.
Citing comments by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board to Indonesian investigators, the plaintiffs' senior counsel Michael Khoo told the court the plane crashed due to intentional pilot action, rather than a mechanical malfunction.
Such a scenario would waive limitations on compensation set by the Warsaw Convention, he told Justice Tan Lee Meng.
Investigators had discovered that the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder on the Boeing 737-300 stopped recording minutes before the plane went down.
Nose-dive
Khoo, using a model for illustration, said the plane was put into a nose-dive and kept in that position deliberately. The flight could easily have been brought under control by either the pilot or co-pilot, he said.
He also suggested the plane's two recorders were tampered with by someone in the cockpit.
Thomas Oey, a plaintiff and former president of the Families of SilkAir MI 185 Association support group, said he was dissatisfied with SilkAir's offer.
"The industrialized nations have much higher compensation amounts," Oey, who lost his mother and brother in the crash, told Reuters. "I don't see why there are double standards."
By comparison, Singapore Airlines offered US$400,000 per victim after the crash of its flight SQ 006 in Taiwan on October 31 which killed 83 of 179 people on board.
Singapore Airlines is the parent company of SilkAir.
Three law firms originally filed 10 suits against SilkAir but two were settled a month ago.
"We are not proceeding. We are accepting the offer to settle," Rajaram Ramiah, a lawyer representing the families of two U.S. victims, told Reuters.
"It's in the court process. It's being settled before the trial but the actual mechanics of the settlement have not been finished yet."
The settlement was in the range of SilkAir's US$200,000 public offer, he said. A third law firm representing two other plaintiffs was not immediately available to comment.
About 50 families have filed suits against aircraft maker Boeing Co in various U.S. states.
Larry Cheng, current president of the SilkAir crash victims support group, said that court proceedings against Boeing in the United States were expected to begin in early 2002.