L.A.-Bound Plane Crashes on Takeoff in Taiwan; 79 Die

A Singapore Airlines jumbo jet bound for Los Angeles crashed in Taiwan during takeoff Tuesday night, killing 79 people as it burst into flames and broke apart.

Singapore Flight 006, with 159 passengers and 20 crew members on board, reportedly struck an object on the runway in Taipei just before taking off in a storm. It was not immediately clear what the plane hit.

More than a dozen people walked away from the crash after prying open emergency exits and crawling out of the burning Boeing 747-400.

A Taiwanese civil aviation official said 79 people died, 56 were hospitalized and 44 had minor or no injuries.

Among the survivors were 24 of the 47 American passengers on board.

“It felt like we’d hit something [coming down]. . . . Then, all hell broke loose,” passenger John Diaz of Santa Monica, an executive with the San Diego firm MP3.com, said in a telephone interview from a hospital in Taipei, the Taiwanese capital.

Throughout the tempestuous night, smoke and flames billowed from the wreckage. The front section was ripped from the rest of the fuselage. The tail and underbelly were lying on the tarmac, eerily intact. Officials said many of the victims were seated toward the front of the plane.

“I felt two hits, and we twisted around twice,” Tonya Joy, 37, of New Zealand told Associated Press at Chang Gung Memorial Hospital near the airport. “I jumped out of the top and landed on the ground. The weather was just awful. Flames came so fast on both sides of the plane.”

During the attempted takeoff at 11:18 p.m., Typhoon Xangsane was approaching Taiwan with winds of 90 mph and heavy rains, prompting officials to set up disaster relief centers on the island and close schools.

Winds at Chiang Kai-shek International Airport shortly before takeoff had reached 41 mph, according to WeatherData Inc., a forecasting service.

Billy K. C. Chang, a Taiwanese aviation official, said it is up to pilots to decide if weather conditions are safe for landing and takeoff.

Tuesday’s crash was the second in two years at the airport. In 1998, a China Airlines Airbus crashed shortly after liftoff, killing all 203 on board.

Taiwanese officials denied reports that Flight 006 had struck another aircraft on the runway. The cause of the disaster was under investigation.

Airline spokesman Rick Clements said in Singapore that the pilot “saw an object on the runway and he tried to take off to avoid the object, and he hit the object.”

The 747 jumbo jet usually is configured to carry between 416 and 524 passengers and crew, so Flight 006 was less than half full. The plane would have been going about 180 mph when it reportedly struck the object on the runway.

On flights as long as the Taipei-Los Angeles run, 747-400s take off with more than 55,000 gallons of kerosene fuel, much of which apparently burned in the fire that followed the crash.

“It felt like we bumped into something huge,” passenger Doug Villermin, 33, of New Iberia, La., told Associated Press. “It looked like the front end just fell off. From there, it just started to fall apart. I ran to the escape hatch with the stewardess, but we couldn’t get it open. Two feet away from me, I saw flames.”

“I didn’t know what to do,” Randy Tang, 40, a businessman who was flying home to Los Angeles to his family, told Reuters. “My first thought was what would happen to my wife and children.”

In addition to the Americans, there were 55 Taiwanese passengers on the aircraft. Also on board were 11 passengers from Singapore, 11 from India, eight Malaysians, five Indonesians, four Mexicans and four Britons. Two each were from Thailand, New Zealand and Vietnam, and one traveler each came from Australia, Canada, Cambodia, Germany, Japan, Ireland, the Philippines and Spain.

Relatives in Los Angeles who rushed to the airport were escorted to a private room with counselors from the Red Cross to await news about the passengers, said B. V. Castillo, an American Red Cross spokeswoman.

Airline officials in Los Angeles were going through passenger lists to notify local family members.

“Our hearts certainly go out to the families of the victims,” said James Boyd, a spokesman for Singapore Airlines.

Airline officials also said they will provide victims’ families with $25,000 in immediate compensation.

Other travelers arriving at the Singapore Airlines ticket counter for the 1 p.m. flight to China were unaware of the crash.

Nomura Sakai, 52, who was in Los Angeles visiting family and was scheduled to leave on a 1 p.m. flight to Japan, said the crash didn’t scare him.

“Airplane accidents are very rare,” he said, adding that the chances of another accident on the same day were slim.

Chin In, who had arrived in Los Angeles on an earlier flight, said he was scheduled to take the ill-fated flight from Taipei but changed his plans at the last minute after his wife asked him to come home early. He said he chose to fly Singapore Airlines because of its safety record.

“They told me I’m really lucky, I’m a really lucky man,” he said.

The tragedy came a year to the day after EgyptAir Flight 990 plunged into the Atlantic Ocean en route from New York to Cairo. That disaster killed 217 people.

Boyd, the Singapore Airlines spokesman, said Flight 006’s captain, C. K. Foong of Malaysia, had more than 11,000 hours of flying experience. The 747-400 aircraft was purchased new in January 1997 and received its most recent maintenance Sept. 16.

A group of experts from the National Transportation Safety Board will leave Washington this morning to assist in the crash investigation.

The NTSB team--which includes experts in airworthiness, flight operations, weather and survival factors--is expected to reach Taipei sometime Thursday evening local time.

Also on the team will be experts in recovering and deciphering the jetliner’s two “black boxes”--a flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder that often provide clues as to the cause of an accident.

After they are recovered, the recording devices--each about the size of a rural mailbox and, despite their nicknames, painted bright orange to make them easier to find--probably will be flown to the NTSB laboratory in Washington for analysis.

Family affairs personnel will accompany the team to assist relatives of the victims.

Tuesday’s crash also marked the first major accident in 28 years of operation for the Southeast Asian city-state’s flagship carrier. Singapore Airlines is one of the world’s most profitable and is best known for its stellar service and the flight attendants’ elegant traditional garb.

In its September issue, Business Traveler magazine named the airline and its archrival, Cathay Pacific of Hong Kong, the two best airlines in the world for business passengers.

Fortune magazine, in its list of most admired global companies, recently named Singapore first among the airlines.

Singapore Airlines’ origins date to 1947, when Malayan Airlines began serving Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Ipoh and Penang. It went through various configurations before becoming Singapore Airlines in 1972.

The airline started small, with only 10 planes serving 22 cities in 18 countries, but the fledgling carrier prospered and expanded. Last year, the airline operated more than 90 aircraft serving 90-plus cities in more than 40 countries.

Between April and September, the company showed an operating profit of more than $560 million on revenue of $4.6 billion.

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Times staff writers Eric Malnic, Gina Piccalo and Louis Sahagun in Los Angeles contributed to this report.