Taiwan Crash Investigators Examine Recorded Data

Investigators of this week’s fatal Singapore Airlines crash here began combing through the doomed flight’s final 16 minutes of recorded information Thursday in hopes of determining the accident’s cause, including whether the pilot might have tried to take off from the wrong runway.

Questions mounted over why wreckage from the downed Boeing 747-400, which split into three pieces, was found mostly on a runway adjacent to the path the jumbo jet was scheduled to use.

Dramatic video footage of the area showed scorched aircraft parts strewn among construction equipment on the adjacent runway, which was under repair and not in use at the time of the accident. Some of the construction equipment was damaged, leading to speculation that the jet had somehow lumbered onto the unused runway and tried taking off, striking the machinery and breaking up in flames.

Survivors reported hearing a loud noise and feeling a violent jolt, possibly two, right before the plane went down.

Officials warned against rushing to judgment, saying that investigators need to examine all the information from the jet’s two “black boxes,” the flight data and voice cockpit recorders, before drawing conclusions.

A definitive answer could take weeks. However, Taiwan’s Aviation Safety Council said it may release some preliminary findings as early as today after working with U.S. and Singaporean experts who arrived Thursday.

Singapore Airlines continued to defend its pilot’s decision to go ahead with Flight 006 to Los Angeles late Tuesday in the face of an approaching typhoon that had brought heavy rains and winds to the airport at the time.

Company representatives also dismissed the possibility that the pilot, a Malaysian veteran named C. K. Foong, confused the two runways. Foong told investigators that he has flown in and out of Taipei’s Chiang Kai-shek International Airport 10 times, which would suggest that he is familiar with its layout, said Kay Yong, managing director of the Aviation Safety Council.

But as bereaved relatives arrived here to claim the dead, whose numbers edged up to 81 on Thursday, anger spilled into the open. The animosity was directed at Singapore Airlines for its handling of the crash, its first major disaster in 28 years of operation.

“You owe us an explanation!” a Singaporean woman shouted at Cheong Choong Kong, the airline’s chief executive and deputy chairman, during a news conference here.

A similar outburst erupted at a news conference in Singapore, prompting the company spokesman to adjourn the gathering.

Although explanations were not forthcoming, investigators revealed new details about the prevailing weather conditions and airport operations when the crash occurred at 11:18 p.m. Tuesday.

About that time, winds at the airport were whipping at anywhere between 41 mph and 70 mph. Visibility was about three times the required minimum of 600 feet.

An exchange between the cockpit and the control tower showed that the accelerating airliner had reached 145 mph just a few seconds before impact.

At that speed, it is impossible to abort takeoff, Yong said. But he would not say whether the plane had achieved any lift before it crashed.

However, officials have ruled out that the plane swerved during takeoff from the proper runway and onto the parallel closed runway, where much of the wreckage was found. Yong said the jet’s “heading angle” was consistent with a straight path down the runway--although he would not say which runway.

He said the Taipei airport is not equipped with a ground radar system to allow the control tower to confirm the position of planes on the ground.

Investigators also are checking out the lighting on the runways at the time, to see if it somehow confused the cockpit crew into turning onto the wrong runway. While taxiing, the Singapore Airlines jet would have reached the adjacent runway, which officials acknowledge was not sealed off, before coming to the proper runway.

Yong said that a row of green lights down the center of the unused runway were illumined, which should have distinguished it from the runway scheduled for use, which does not have green lights.

Some of the yellow and white lights on the regular runway had been damaged earlier Tuesday after a Mandarin Airlines plane wobbled off and then back onto the strip upon landing, Yong said.

The strong winds Tuesday night did lead at least one airline to cancel flights. A spokesman for Taiwan-based EVA Airways said the airline decided about 10:30 p.m. to ground two flights, one at 11:30 p.m. bound for San Francisco and another at 11:55 p.m. for Los Angeles.

But the spokesman noted that the airlines’ planes for those flights, equipped to take both passengers and cargo, were different from the passenger-only Singapore Airlines jet. Different standards applied in determining whether they could fly in such weather.

By comparison, at 11:02 p.m., a flight to Amsterdam from Taipei, the Taiwanese capital, left as planned--just a quarter of an hour before Flight 006, trying to take off in nearly identical conditions, crashed.