It seems that much of this thread has revolved around blame. Are the pilots to blame for the SQ6 crash or did the environment and CKS conspire to force their mistake? Let me try and clarify the issue:
To err is to be human. Everyone makes mistakes. BUT when your mistake costs the lives of 83 men, women and children, not to mention horrific burns to 40 survivors, THEN something is going to hit the fan. People WILL blame you for making that mistake because you were in full controll and made all the decisions.
The fact is that blame for this accident lies squarely at the feet of Capt. Foong, and his crew, because they failed the basic test of navigation -- to use a map and compass to ensure that the a/c ended up on the correct r/w. The fact that 05R looked 'normal' or that the t/w and r/w markings were bad are IRRELEVANT because IF the Capt. had employed good navigation skills and not dead reckoning the crash would not have happened.
The fundamental objective of any investigation is to identify WHO made the mistake and then ask WHY it was made, and HOW to prevent it being made again. The ASC identified the WHO, were blurry on the WHY, and completely missed the HOW to prevent another. The WHY in this case was because the Capt.s navigation skills were poor or sloppy on the ground, and the HOW therefore should have been to make it mandatory to test Pilots' low-viz taxi skills on a regular basis to prevent the development of bad habits.
One final thing. A word of warning to all you pilots who use dead-reckoning in poor viz conditions -- there is a reason why they call it DEAD reckoning.
A summary of our argument and the ASC and MOT reports can be found on the SQ6 Survivor's web site:
www.anycities.com/sq006/crash.html
(P.S. this site is the source of Murrelet's earlier posting)