anito4a,
As you progress in your aviation career, you will learn that all accidents are caused by a chain of events with many contributing factors! As PAXboy implied, it's disturbing to have an inquiry to publicly announce findings within a month of the accident, especially the following statements:
"Vuttichai Singhamanee, director of the Civil Aviation Department’s Flight Safety Standards Bureau, said that from his checks the MD82 aircraft which served OG029 was in good shape, as the pilot did not report any problems prior the accident. The Indonesian captain also met safety requirements, as he had flown only five hours on the fateful day." (posting #210)
From those of us who have worked at OX, we all know OX did not want to spend any money on maintenance. Even if the logbook showed everything is working OK there were often "XXX repaired, ground check OK" entries that would fulfill the MEL requirement only to be written up again on the next flight (thus gaining another 10 days before it is required to be fixed.) To state that the MD82 was in good shape as early as Sep 27th just confirmed that there was neither a careful inspection of the logbook nor any audit of the repairs.
Again those of us who have worked at OX are familiar with Namfon's reluctance to let us "overpaid bus drivers" to have any time off and with the management attitude of the pilots must do whatever the they asked of them (specifically, to exceed duty limitations). Although the pilots have "only flown five hours on the fateful day", there is no mention of the duty periods prior to that day, which could very possible caused fatigue that could dramatically affect their judgement and reaction. We tried 6 sectors days in the early days of B752 operation in OX in 2004 and quickly replaced them with 4 sector days. Although 6 sectors a day on domestic operations (3 out and backs from BKK to CNX, CEI, HDY, or HKT) were within the duty limitation of 8 hrs flight time, it was simply not smart for it was too fatiguing when you factor in the weather avoidance and holds one experience regularly on a daily basis within Thailand. Fortunately for us Namfon was not firmly in charge then so we were allowed to do so.
I am not familiar with the MD-82 but I doubt any OX aircraft would be equipped with EGPWS (it would have added cost to the aircraft), which would give the pilots advance warning of windshear. For that matter, I curious whether the GPWS on that fateful aircraft was operational or not. Simulator windshear training is not designed to see how many times you can escape windshear but to let you learn how to recognize windshear. Again we have experienced that OX have very little, if any, training. If the crew was slow to recognize windshear (yes I know the tower relayed info from previous aircraft, but HKT does not have LLWS warning equipment so it would not have been a windshear warning just an advisory) and carried out a standard missed approach instead of the windshear escape manoeuver, that would have made the difference between being safely airborne and crashing.
In western culture, the goal of accident investigation is to find out exactly what happened so similar tragedies can be avoided in the future. That is the main reason these process take such a long time to complete. With the Asian culture of "saving face", unfortunately the greatest fear for those of us who are familiar with OX operations will be realized - that this avoidable accident will be attributed simply as pilot error. The major contributing factor of OX mismanagement (unwillingness to spend money on maintenance and training and exploiting pilots by forcing them to exceed their duty limits) and other possible factors such as fatigue, lack of training, and lack of maintenance will be covered up to avoid loss of face to Udom and DCA. We just hope that these factors will be exposed to the public so there will not be any similar accidents in the future.
If you search for Orient Thai and read the threads, you will see that most the recent postings (from 2004 onward, much later than your inquiry in 2001) does not have much good to say about the management there. Specifically,
http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthr...ht=Orient+Thai
Many of us, including myself, have worked there and was fortunate enough to leave because we had other options. IHMO, this accident could have easily been avoided and that is why I had to answer your posting.