SilkAir MI 185
A pdf version of Flight Safety Australia will be available next week at:
www.casa.gov.au
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The Civil Aviation Safety Authority has just published a report in its journal Flight Safety Australia which should picked up by the media, for the sake of Australians who have to forsake our very safe airlines and fly with foreign carriers.
Without making a judgment, the report says "readers can draw their own conclusions."
The report of a crash in December 1997 seems to show that the aircraft, carrying 102 people, was destroyed by a deliberate act of the captain, who, it is claimed, was in serious financial difficulties. It seems he switched off the cockpit recorders and sent the loaded airliner into an inverted dive at over the speed of sound, an action which required a positive, deliberate, control input up to the moment the aircraft began to break up before impact.
The investigation was one of the most comprehensive possible, but "the Indonesian National Transport Safety Committee ... produced an evasive and worthless report," contradicting the careful findings of the non-Indonesian investigative bodies.
A further report in Flight Safety suggests that there is a deep-seated official reluctance to admit it is possible "that anyone who would commit suicide would also kill so many innocent people alongside him." The pilot involved had been reported and indeed demoted for landing too fast and trying to "reduce flight times."
Travellers would be well advised to study this excellent article and consider its import.