Crane Tore Singapore Jet Apart, Inquiry Finds

One week after the deadly crash of a Singapore Airlines jetliner, the airport runway here remains an eerie memorial: melted suitcases, crumpled shirts, a doll, scattered pink and purple socks--and a mangled construction crane.

Investigators confirmed Tuesday that it was the crane that ripped open the belly of the jumbo jet as it hurtled down the wrong runway. Eighty-two people died in the fiery takeoff attempt.

“Bodies just began to fall out,” David Lee, an investigator with Taiwan’s Aviation Safety Council, told reporters at Chiang Kai-shek International Airport during the first close public look at the wreckage.

Last week, when crash experts disclosed the contents of the cockpit voice recorder of Flight 006, they would only confirm that the pilot used the wrong runway and that there was a series of collisions as the plane sped down the airstrip.

On Tuesday, investigators offered the most detailed account yet of the crash. Seconds after the jet began its takeoff, a front wheel hit a concrete barrier about 5,000 feet down the runway. Then the plane slammed into a crane that ripped open its underside, Lee said.

Parts of metal painted in Singapore Airlines’ trademark blue and yellow were twisted around the body of the flipped-over crane. A nearby crane was badly battered.

In the plane’s tail section--which Lee said was the least damaged--magazines and candies were strewn on the soiled purple seats. The ceiling and overhead compartments had collapsed, revealing air pipes and electrical cables. Some seats dangled out of the plane in a section split from the rest of the jet.

The major question facing experts is why the pilot thought he was on the correct runway.

Kay Yong, managing director of the Aviation Safety Council, said the probe is focusing on whether the closed airstrip--which was parallel to the assigned runway--was improperly lighted, inviting the pilot to make the fatal choice Oct. 31 during a storm brought by an approaching typhoon.

Investigators have heard conflicting reports about whether the lights along the side of the closed runway were on, indicating to the pilot that he could use the strip, Yong said.

He said that seconds after the crash, an airport maintenance vehicle requested that the air traffic control tower turn on the runway lights. However, the request did not specify which of the two runways had its lights switched off, Yong said.

Yong also said visibility was 2,950 feet at the time of the crash, better than the original estimate of 1,640 feet. But even then, the pilot would not have been able to see the first concrete block, which was 4,921 feet from the runway’s entrance, Yong said.