The captain's trial begins.
From the Sydney Morning Herald. Highlights mine:
A GARUDA jet continued its ill-fated landing despite "running wild" and becoming uncontrollable early in its approach to Yogyakarta Airport's in March last year, its captain, Marwoto Komar, confessed under police interrogation.
Komar's trial for criminal negligence over the deaths of 21 people in the crash, including five Australians, begins today. He has never spoken publicly about the Boeing 737's descent, but his police interrogation report, which is central to the case, has been obtained by Herald.
Under questioning, Komar said there had been arguments with his co-pilot during the landing. He admitted the plane touched down at an unsafe speed.
He said he was concerned about conserving fuel - one of the possible reasons advanced as to why 15 automated alarms telling the pilot to "go-around", were ignored.
Asked by police why he did not land visually after experiencing problems with an instrument landing, Komar said he did not tell his co-pilot he was continuing to use the instrument landing system "because at that time I was the only one in control of the plane that was already running wild".
"The plane nose was always going down and it was difficult for me to bring the plane nose up ... [one of] the reasons for that was the malfunction of the plane's stabiliser which is located at the tail of the plane. However, I could not be sure of the reason," he said.
"So it can be said that the plane's performance ... was not stable," Komar said.
He described unsuccessful attempts to bring under control a plane that was descending too quickly. He admitted he never achieved a safe speed.
"It was impossible for me to go around because it was difficult to lift up the plane's nose, so my last attempt was trying to put the plane on a glide path, reasoning the plane would not touch the soil that was ahead of the runway. In other words my only hope was to reach for the runway."
On landing, the plane was travelling at 150 knots (270kmh), he said. "I do know the possibility of the risks but at least at that time I thought that my attempts carried the least risk."
Police have called for Komar to be jailed for life for the crash. His is the first criminal prosecution of an Indonesian pilot.
Air safety investigators determined the plane landed at nearly double the safe speed, bouncing off the runway, through the airport fence and across an embankment. Its wing was severed and the plane caught alight with many passengers trapped inside.
The airport's safety run-off did not meet international safety standards and its fire-fighting equipment and practices were heavily criticised by investigators.
Komar said he compromised with his co-pilot, Gagam Rahman, on the level of flaps the plane was using on descent because "by using a flap of 30 degrees the usage of fuel was relatively not much". Garuda had introduced large bonuses for conserving fuel shortly before last year's accident.
Komar faces charges of negligence causing injury and death and flying an aircraft which endangered the safety of people on the plane.