Rudder actuator supplier to fight verdict over 737 crash
A Los Angeles jury has awarded $43 million against Parker-Hannifin in a lawsuit brought by families of victims in the December 1997 crash of a SilkAir Boeing 737-300 in Indonesia. Boeing, also a defendant in the case, settled out of court before the hearing and provided only videotaped testimony, says Parker, describing itself as "incredulous" at the verdict.
Parker, rudder actuator supplier on the 737, says a number of motions it has brought have to be heard in the California state court before it decides whether to appeal against the "unbelievable" verdict.
In May 2002, families of six victims of the crash lost their appeal against a Singapore court ruling that threw out their claim for damages. In October 2001, a Singapore high court judge ruled the families were not entitled to damages because there was no evidence the aircraft was deliberately crashed by one of the pilots. In the California case, the plaintiffs argued that the Parker-supplied rudder actuator was to blame for the crash, which killed all 104 people on board.
On a flight between Jakarta and Singapore on 19 December 1997, the 737 crashed into a river in south Sumatra after cruising normally at 35,000ft (10,700m). Both the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder stopped working in the minutes leading up to the crash after recording normal flight parameters. This gave rise to a theory that the captain, Tsu Way Ming, pulled the recorders' circuit breakers before incapacitating his co-pilot or locking him out of the cockpit and putting the aircraft into a near-vertical dive.
Indonesian investigators said in a final report issued in December 2000 that the causes could not be determined, but the US National Transportation Safety Board disputed the findings, arguing that the crash was deliberately caused by the captain. The NTSB findings were not admissible in court, says Parker, which used radar traces of the 737's descent to argue that the aircraft must have been flown into the ground deliberately. The Indonesian report recorded that the stabiliser trim had been set heavily nose-down at impact.
Relatives of six Russians killed in the 1 July 2002 collision of a Bashkirian Airlines Tupolev Tu-154M and a DHL Boeing 757 freighter over southern Germany have filed lawsuits against traffic collision avoidance system (TCAS) manufacturers Honeywell, Aviation Communications and Surveillance Systems, L-3 Communications, Thales and Thales North America. The relatives allege that the companies did not brief crews adequately on the equipment's use.GRAHAM WARWICK / WASHINGTON DC
Source: Flight International
