Friends, Family Reflect on Fate of Those on Flight 006

About 50 relatives of passengers on the Singapore Airlines 747 jet that crashed in Taiwan this week began gathering at Los Angeles International Airport on Wednesday night for an overnight flight to Taipei.

And as the sons and fathers, husbands and cousins assembled in the echoing international terminal for the long flight across the Pacific, friends and co-workers in Southern California talked quietly about those who had survived the crash--and those who hadn’t.

Flight 006 crashed on takeoff from Taipei, the Taiwanese capital, at 11:18 p.m. Tuesday, killing at least 79 of the 179 people on board. Officials said at least 23 of the 47 American passengers were killed. One passenger was unaccounted for Wednesday and presumed dead.

The survivors included people like Jamal Obagi, 42, of Huntington Harbor, who called family members five hours after the crash to let them know that he had survived.

The dead included people like Shann Nan Chuang, 53, a Fountain Valley resident who had been visiting relatives in Taiwan.

Obagi’s relatives were delighted to learn that he made it. Chuang’s family was devastated to hear that she had not.

“We’re all traumatized,” her son, Steven Chuang, said Wednesday afternoon. “We’re ready to go to Taiwan.”

Tee Hooi Teoh, a spokesman for Singapore Airlines, said his company planned to send more than four dozen relatives to Taipei on a flight scheduled to leave LAX about 11:30 p.m. Wednesday. He said 10 more relatives flew from LAX to Taiwan on Tuesday night on a Malaysia Airlines plane. The cause of the crash has not been determined.

James Boyd, another spokesman for Singapore Airlines, said the families of each person who died in the crash will receive $25,000 during the next few days “to help meet their immediate needs.”

Many of those aboard the plane came from Southern California’s large and diverse Asian community.

Among them was Jeffrey Aw, 31, who had traveled to Taiwan with his four siblings to be with their father and grandmother, both of whom have cancer. Friends said Aw was returning to the U.S. to help sell the family home in Irvine.

Singapore Airlines listed Aw as dead or presumed dead. But friends and neighbors who gathered at his childhood home were praying that--despite the listing--Aw had somehow survived.

“We keep hoping that he’s just missing,” said Ken Lin, who has known Aw since they attended Irvine Valley College together a decade ago.

Phillip Lee, 29, another college friend, took Aw to the airport 10 days ago for his trip to Asia. Before the flight, Aw spoke of his father’s cancer.

“He just said he really loves his dad,” Lee said.

Aw, a warehouse manager at a Costa Mesa clothing store, liked skiing, mountaineering and riding his motorcycle along Pacific Coast Highway.

“But Jeff is the kind of guy who was real careful with life,” Lin said. “He never took anything for granted.”

Chuang and her son were close. When Steven Chuang married, his mother’s wedding gift was a house down the street from hers in Fountain Valley that she had bought three years before and kept vacant.

“She was very family oriented,” said neighbor Connie Wadsley. “She and her sons were always walking from one house to the other. After her grandson was born, she lit up.”

For Janardhan Volam, 30, and his 27-year-old wife, Neelima Vuppala, Flight 006 was supposed to be the last leg of a joyous reunion.

Transplants from India, the young couple were returning home to Simi Valley after a visit to their native village in southern India--and this time they had their 8-month-old son to show off.

All three died in the crash.

On Wednesday, friends and co-workers mourned a couple seemingly poised on the brink of a brilliant future.

Volam was a computer programmer for Countrywide Home Loans who had held high-tech positions in Britain, Boston and Tulsa before landing a job in Simi Valley 18 months ago. His wife was studying computer graphics and had created a Web site devoted to her son.

Kenneth Chen of Palos Verdes said he received a call from Singapore Airlines about 4 a.m. Wednesday informing him that his mother, Hsiu Yu Chen, 79, of Arcadia, had died in the crash.

Chen said his mother had been on a package tour of Japan and Taiwan but had stayed longer to visit one of her sons.

On Wednesday afternoon, 80-year-old Jou Hsiang Chen was getting ready for the night flight to Taiwan--to cremate his wife’s body and return with her ashes to their home in Arcadia.

Obagi suffered only minor bruises and was able to help four severely burned passengers out of the wreckage.

“My brother is very shaken up,” Khaled Obagi said. “We’re very thankful he’s alive.”

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Times staff writers Hector Becerra, Jeff Gottlieb and Jennifer Mena in Orange County contributed to this story.