Crews search for cause of crash

Los Angeles Times

TAIPEI, Taiwan - As a violent typhoon continued, investigators of a deadly Singapore Airlines crash were trying yesterday to determine whether the jumbo jet struck a mystery object on the runway seconds before shearing apart and bursting into flames.

Reports circulated Taipei that the Boeing 747-400 bound for Los Angeles may have hit a wheel or a piece of heavy machinery that had been parked on a runway.

"We still can't rule out any possibilities," said Chou Kuang-tsan of Taiwan's Aviation Safety Council, the agency investigating the accident.

Salvage crews recovered the jet's "black boxes," the data and voice recorders that should contain information about Flight 006's final moments during takeoff Tuesday night.

The workers, wrapped in raincoats, often had to link hands in a human chain to keep from being blown away by roaring winds.

Weather delayed dozens of flights at Chiang Kai-shek International Airport here. It also hampered recovery of the last of the bodies from the wreckage, a grim task completed by morning's end.

Authorities said at least 79 of the 159 passengers and 20 crew members were killed. The death count, which includes 24 Taiwanese and 23 Americans, could climb higher with critically injured victims clinging to life in area hospitals. One passenger was still not accounted for and presumed dead.

Some of the dead were so badly burned that DNA tests will be needed to identify the bodies, which lay in a makeshift morgue at the airport before being removed late last night.

Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian joined mourners at the airport and offered his condolences, burning incense in a traditional tribute to the dead.

Relatives of the overseas victims are expected to reach Taipei in the coming days.

Investigators with the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board are due to arrive Thursday to help Taiwanese counterparts piece together what caused the Singaporean carrier's first major disaster.

The main focus yesterday was on reports of an object in the path of the jet as it attempted to take off at 11:18 p.m. Tuesday.

The experienced captain, a Malaysian named C.K. Foong, had reported spotting an object on the runway, a spokesman for Singapore Airlines said. Foong survived the crash.

Survivors told of hearing loud noise as the plane _ hurtling forward at about 180 mph _ began nosing into the air.

``Right as we started to lift up the nose, there was a loud noise, a loud boom,'' said James Paik, an engineer from Woodland Hills, Calif., who was trying to return home from a work trip.

``I could see the flames right away,'' Paik said. Fire engulfed the plane and smoke filled the cabin. Paik jumped out of an exit door with some fellow passengers, even though the safety chute had not deployed.

Paik, 29, was one of the lucky handful who walked away from the crash unscathed.

The source of the loud bang he and others heard has investigators guessing. Television footage showed a damaged excavator or crane close by the broken-up airliner, which sat Wednesday as a charred husk on the runway, prompting speculation that the ground equipment was the object the jet struck.

There was also a suggestion that the accelerating plane might have hit a wheel on the runway. A wheel not belonging to the Singapore Airlines Boeing 747-400 was reportedly found amid the wreckage, although this could not be confirmed.

Pieces of the wrecked plane came to rest on a second, unused runway parallel to the jet's 2 1/4-mile-long runway. Both were out of action Wednesday, leaving only a third available to the backed-up line of planes trying to take off and land.

Despite the stormy conditions before Flight 006's accident, aviation officials said they did not consider it hazardous enough to warrant closing the airport down. Visibility, which Taiwanese officials said was about 1,800 feet Tuesday night, far exceeded the 600-foot minimum requirement, despite the approach of Typhoon Xangfane.

Singapore Airlines defended the decision of its pilot, a veteran with more than 11,000 hours of flying experience, to go ahead.

Foong ``wouldn't be allowed to take off if the weather conditions were very bad,'' airline spokesman Rick Clements told reporters in Singapore.

Indeed, passengers who boarded Flight 006 in Singapore credited the crew with a smooth approach into Taipei in rough conditions.

``The pilots performed an absolutely beautiful landing,'' said John Harrison, a former Orange County, Calif., resident who now lives and works in Indonesia. ``I didn't have any fear of getting on the plane'' for the continued journey to Los Angeles.

Harrison and his wife, Mary, were planning on picking up their daughter in Irvine, Calif., before going to Dallas for a wedding.

Instead, he found himself looking in horror at ``a ball of flame'' out the window, choking on smoke after the jetliner crashed and listening to the wrenching screams of his fellow passengers. Clawing at the overhead oxygen masks, which were not activated, left him with scratches on his hand.

``It was horrible. It was a hot, putrid smoke _ you couldn't breathe,'' Harrison, 53, said. ``You were gasping for air.''

Putting a pillow over Mary's face, Harrison rushed to look for an escape. The yells of a flight attendant signaled that there was a way out in front, through the first-class cabin.

Harrison ran back to his seat and hustled his wife out _ through the exit door, down a crumpled-up chute and eventually into the safety of the terminal, where the injured were laid out on chairs and the floor, covered in blankets to ward off shock. The Harrisons, relatively unhurt, were treated at a hospital for smoke inhalation.

They intend to continue with their plans to visit the United States, perhaps leaving Taiwan Thursday on another plane. Harrison, a frequent flier, said he continues to trust the safety of air travel.