NICHOLAS IONIDES / SINGAPORE
Plaintiffs allege a deliberate act by the aircraft's captain led to the deaths of 97 people
Families of six victims of the December 1997 SilkAir Boeing 737-300 crash in Indonesia are the first to file suit against the airline in Singapore, claiming the accident was the result of a deliberate act by the captain. The trial, expected to take 15 days, should begin on 2 July in the Singapore High Court.
Plaintiffs, representing four Singaporean victims - two with US passports - as well as a Malaysian and a UK victim, will argue that the crash could only have been caused by "manual input" by the captain. They claim that SilkAir, a wholly owned subsidiary of Singapore Airlines, is liable under the provisions of the Warsaw Convention.
Represented by law firm Michael Khoo & Partners, plaintiffs will call international experts to testify that mechanical failure could not have caused the crash, which killed all 97 passengers and seven crew.
Plaintiffs intend to point to the final Indonesian accident report, which details tests on recovered wreckage. The report's appendix includes an extensive US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) submission and a letter from former chairman Jim Hall, who in an unprecedented move challenged the official "inconclusive" findings and said the crash was deliberate.
Indonesia's National Transportation Safety Committee (NTSC) released its final report in December, saying it was not possible to determine causes. In August 1999, however, an interim report from the same investigator said the horizontal stabiliser had nose-down trim at impact that "could indicate a manual input from the cockpit".
Operating as flight MI185 between Jakarta and Singapore on 19 December 1997, the 737 crashed into the Musi river in South Sumatra after cruising normally at 35,000ft (10,700m). The cockpit voice recorder (CVR) and flight data recorder stopped working in the minutes prior to the crash.
The theory supported by the NTSB is that the captain, Tsu Way Ming, disabled both recorders shortly before incapacitating his New Zealand co-pilot or locking him out of the cockpit and putting the aircraft into a dive. Tsu took out a large insurance policy before the crash, had accumulated substantial personal debts, had disconnected a CVR months earlier and had been disciplined by the airline.
The plaintiffs seek "fair compensation", with any damages to be assessed by the court. Other victims' families have taken legal action against Boeing in the USA. SilkAir declines to comment on the legal action but has said it accepts the NTSC findings.
Source: Flight International
