The Truth about the SilkAir MI 185 Disaster

[slayerdude]

my 2cents worth....
I had a look again at the Nat Geo aircrash investigation on MI185...
all factual evidence was indeed laid out logically.
possibly causes as we all know

1) pilot suicide
2) mechanical failure

for both these causes, there has been inconclusive evidence to actually point the almighty finger.

The findings was classified as unresolved by Nat Geo... indeed this is also the offcial finding.

Sometimes air crash investigations will be unconclusive due to available evidence.... I suspect that is what we can expect of AF447....

What has happen here now is here say... Indeed the voice recorder was disconnected... but was it the captain.... no way to tell really......

rudder actuator failure.... again possible but actuator valve was recovered and tested ...ops normal.....

another possibility is could the airplane have been pranked on an earlier sector but was not written up..... perhaps some structural failure????

too many possibilities... as the evidenence is inadequate to make a conclusion.... let us allow the dead to rest in peace... law suits have all been settled... people have moved on..... MI185 will however always be a mystery.....

[nortwinds]

The Truth about SilkAir MI 185

Slayerdude, thank you for joining the debate but to update you: mechanical failure is effectively ruled out as the odds against first a CVR failure then immediately afterwards an unrelated mechanical failure, are just too huge.

Also the main Nat Geo point, if I remember correctly, was of a microscopic irregularity in the only bit of wreckage to otherwise and amazingly survive pristine. So that leaves suicide and murder, or murder and suicide.

LukeST, you say you were an instructor at the MI 185 copilots flying school so could I please ask you what the selection processes were at that school, firstly for entry to flying training, and secondly for selection for an airline position.

Massey 058, you have yet to share with us the "compelling" thoughts of your investigator.

Training wheels, I do not know the finances of the particular copilot, but we all know that generally young pilots, who are not selected for military training, have to invest heavily in training to get started. I am most certainly not suggesting they commit suicide because of it, of course not, so why argue that the captain committed suicide because of debt. We have to treat both pilots equally and I do not believe either pilot committed suicide, or murder, for financial reasons.

Finally, I will copy relevant extracts from an open letter to a local flying newsletter. It was written a few weeks after the MI 185 tragedy but makes no reference at all to it.

"My name is xxx xxx. Under paid over worked ya ya ya you know that story well!!! ..... I can't afford to be a fully paid up member to fly there three or four days per year. ..... A little about me Is in order I think. 26 years old, raised in Wellington, was an Automotive Engineer for a few years till the flying bug really kicked in. Worked and went gliding, the latter as much as the former permitted. Soon had inspirations of having a job a "little higher" in life. So went to xxx xxx and did the Bav. Ended up being one of the few to go to Garuda Indonesia, based in Jakareta.. So went from flying PA34-220T aircraft with a mere 190 hours total time to B737-300/400/500 aircraft. I don't think I need to say just how much of a "lucky break" and career booster it was! Did that for three years, till the recent uprisings in Indonesia forced us out to fairer pastures. You may be interested in passing to note the current going rate of the pound of flesh there..... After the currency DEVALUATION we received in our hands on our final pay 3,400,000 Rp (Rupiah) = 242 US$ (for a month)!!!!!! Yes we did live off the credit cards a lot!!"

[slayerdude]

I really feel for the writer of the open letter... especially at times like this where avaition is at the bottom end of the provebial wave... guys do get screwed around alot... as the ones that have been lucky in aviation will attest that its all about timing!!!

notwinds ... I just can't accept some arguments nor can I dispel some arguments simply because the evident is found wanting and not concrete. In other words the evidence can be distorted to advantage any party. this we have seen lawyers do during the legal proceedings for the class action suits against Boeing and Silkair(separate cases)... the same evidence used to advantage a certain group.

I was lucky to to able to do an A&I investigation course conducted by RMIT, and have learned that an inconclusive verdict is possible if and when the material and evident of the accident or incident is found wanting... as I said earlier ... AF447 will probably suffer the same fate...
Indeed very difficult to accept as closure is always important for situations like MI185... however as most pilots are blessed with a logical thought process... if we do remove emotion out of the argument... there can only be one verdict... INCONCLUSIVE... and please accept that in no way am i running down anybody's view here... this is a personal view after reviewing the fact and material.

[Massey058]

nortwinds,

I originally intended my post to be a PM but in typing it on my phone I somehow ended up posting it publicly. I don't wish to go into further what the person who I talked to said. It was a private conversation, although compelling started on my curiosity over the circumstances and the link with one of the victims coming from my training school.

Take that as you will but some of you're reasoning and lines of questioning are flawed. To be pedantic with the quote the school never had PA34-220T's in the 90's. They arrived in 2003. Prior to that multi-training was on PA44-180T's and latterly PA44-180's.

[Luke SkyToddler]

It's freely available information nortwinds, why don't you ring Massey up and ask them, or go and inspect the place yourself, I'm sure they'll be glad to show you round.

In fact since you're so sure of the facts, why don't you get off the internet and go tell the Singapore CAAS what you know and arrange an all-guns-blazing dawn raid on this terrible dodgy flying school. I'm sure they'll be really happy that your detective work has solved this long-outstanding mystery for them. Or alternatively, they might call the psychiatric police and take you away in a white van.

I'll talk about Massey with you all day long, just as soon as YOU provide clear and concisely reasoned answers to the 4 questions I posed to you in my previous post (#62), which you have conveniently failed to do. Again.

In fact forget about that, all you have to do is provide us here with ONE single, solitary, no-matter-how-tiny, piece of actual EVIDENCE - or find ONE credible witness statement, that can point towards Duncan or his training background as having any bearing whatsoever on this case. Until then, it's kind of pointless discussing things further with you.

And my friend, unless YOU can provide proper answers to MY questions, or find someone who clearly isn't a complete bloody lunatic, to support your line of enquiry here on pprune, can I politely suggest that you get off this forum for professional aviators, and go find a new home on a forum discussing alien abductions or area 52 or something slightly more suited to your obsessive-compulsive-sinister-conspiracy flogging-a-dead-horse nature.

Can I also ask the mods to consider closing this thread if it degenerates into any deeper levels of bizarreness, I don't know his family but if I was Duncan's parents reading this I'd find it pretty deeply upsetting that this kind of level of nonsense was being talked about regarding their dead son.

[Sky Dancer]

I wonder why people are trying to point fingers at Duncan Ward unless you were a close friend of Tsu's and you're trying to shift the blame.All the evidence points to an intentional act of putting that aircraft into that manouvre and the probability of Tsu having done it is very high.The rudder hard over theory does not hold much weight because in all the previous cases of rudder hard over it happened when the aircraft had descended from cruise altitude and were in the initial or intermediate approach.The huge temperature change is what caused the PCUs to malfunction the way they did.I wonder how the courts accepted this claim in the first place.

[millerscourt]

Sky Dancer

It is not "people" pointing fingers at Duncan but just Nortwinds who clearly has an agenda all of his own for reasons he is not telling us.

Where on earth the F/O trained at has to do with incident is a complete red herring all in Nortwind's crazy mind.

[nortwinds]

The Truth about SilkAir MI 185

Slayerdude, thank you for your impartial comments but I believe the verdict of "inconclusive" is only a default situation because only the captain was examined in detail. The captain was deemed guilty within hours of the tragedy - and in the circumstances the "inconclusive" is a testimony to the logic and integrity of those who were only given access to half the facts.

Massey058 I respect your wish not to go further but it does mean that your arguement is not such "compelling" evidence for anyone else.

I have checked the source for the quote of PA34s and I am sorry if the type is incorrect but I did quote it exactly as written. I did not continue to quote the letter but the copilot had already gone on to better things.

LukeST, if the information about the flying school selection criteria for airline positions is freely available then could you or someone else please share it with us all. At the time, the lack of information about what the selection criteria were was one of the students' complaints that precipitated the educational investigation, then the CAA investigation, of the flying school. I will get back to you as soon as I can on your post 62 questions as they merit their own response.

Could I also gently remind you that there are not just one but 104 grieving families for whom all that can be offerred is justice and the opportuity to learn and improve safety for others.

Millerscourt, it is not where the co-pilot trained that is important in itself, but the whole process of his initial selection, classroom training and testing, flying training, flight testing, experience, certification, and selection for the airlines, that led to him being a copilot in a B737 - and how this compared with the more traditional selection, training and experience of the captain.

And why challenge whether I am a friend of the captain when others clearly show a friendship with the co-pilot. These double standards where comments can be made with complete impunity against the captain, yet calls be made to the moderator to close the thread when the co-pilot is discussed, are obvious and inequitable.

[Tee Emm]

One of the most intriguing aspects of this whole subject of who dunnit in the cockpit of MI 185 was a letter sent by a former Silk Air foreign captain to Silk Air management a few weeks before before the crash happened. It was later given to lawyers acting for the relatives of the dead passengers but was not offered as legal evidence of any blame. The foreign captain had been offered an extension to his employment contract. He thanked management for the offer of extension but declined stating that he never wanted to risk his life flying an aircraft after the deceased pilot was an operating crew member. He wrote that he was extremely critical of the way the deceased pilot conducted his flying with passengers saying the structural integrity of the aircraft was often compromised by the severe handling technique the deceased pilot was known to adopt while flying passengers. The captain who wrote that letter to Silk Air management was an experienced 737 contract captain from the Middle East. He voiced strong criticism of the system that allowed the deceased captain to carry on flying despite numerous evidence that he should have been grounded. For the Mods I hope this information does not cross Pprune editorial boundaries. If this is any possibility of this please remove the post.

[parabellum]

and how this compared with the more traditional selection, training and experience of the captain.

Total tosh!!! Tsu was ex military, have a glance through the pilot workforce of SIA and you will see that only a few actually come from the air force, be it SIA or SilkAir, the vast majority come through the SIA, in house, training network.

If you want to do a real witch hunt Nortwinds try comparing the SilkAir training records of the Capt and FO in question. I doubt these, complete and unedited, were made available to the enquiry.

[nortwinds]

The Truth about SilkAir MI 185

LikeST, sorry but I thought we had moved on from your Post 62 questions - but you requested a response:

1) Nothing to prove here as we agree with other. I do not belive all those failures could or did take place one after the other. I believe the captain pulled the CBs - the final recordings support this, and no one challenges it. I then believe one of the pilots put the aircraft in. Again few, apart from Nat Geo, dispute that. The debate is simply which pilot (and to learn from it, why).

2) All we know from the recording is that the copilot was at the controls when the recordings ceased shortly before the aircraft was lost. Assuming the destruction was deliberate, and not mechanical, it does not matter who was actually at the controls as the other pilot had access to the "fire axe" referred to in earlier posts. I myself believe the copilot was still at the controls but it does not matter - the result was the same.

3) Assuming the destruction was suicide/murder, or murder/suicide, the pilot at the controls was either dead, disabled, or berserk.

4) The answer to this one is complex. Basic training flaws are important latent weaknesses (eg see the current Garuda and Adam Air threads) and investigators do go back to check training records. They did with the captain but not with the copilot.

How were the early weaknesses overlooked - well by definition that is the very danger of latent weaknesses. There is also halo effect, taking earlier things for granted. And in this particular investigation simply because of a close-off of this line of enquiry following an immediate diversion of blaming the captain. Some other contributors have used stronger words.

Personally, whenever I have suggested looking at the copilot there has been an emotional defensive reaction which presumeable stopped others who did not have the anominity of PPRuNe to support them. Yet by contrast, you refer to "Tsu's crime" with impunity.

Now, could you please answer my question on what were the criteria for selecting pilots for airline positions as being an instructor at the flying school one would assume you were aware of them.

[nortwinds]

The Truth about SilkAir MI 185

Tee Emm, yes I have heard earlier suggestions of that letter yet by contrast Parabellum in his post 52 of 8 December said "the captain was known to be an excellent pilot when it came to handling an aircraft with a very sound training and subsequent career in the RSAF under his belt. The deceased captain's ability to fly the aircraft has never been in doubt, but his management of an aircraft and a flight has".

Perhaps your key word was "intriguing"

[parabellum]

You are grasping at straws Nortwinds. It was known that Tsu could fly an aircraft well, the facts were that frequently he didn't and was reported for it.

Having been rejected by SIA mainline and only offered SilkAir and then losing his training position Tsu's self esteem was low and he had lost a lot of 'face' amongst his RSAF friends and colleagues.

[slayerdude]

Having been rejected by SIA mainline and only offered SilkAir and then losing his training position Tsu's self esteem was low and he had lost a lot of 'face' amongst his RSAF friends and colleagues.

It's heresay! I know a 3rd party that said he was offered both when he applied, however time to command was shorter in Silkair, hence he took the obvious route.

Nortwinds... I agree that BOTH pilots must be looked at more carefully.However the very least we can all agree on is that there was no cause for premeditated suicide/murder... Tsu and Ward had people waiting for them!

[millerscourt]

slayerdude

You miss the point. Tsu may well have been offered a position in mainline for all I know but the point is he joined Silk Air and after his previous actions at Silk Air culminating in his loss of his Line Training position he was doomed as far as ever getting into mainline or ever getting any further in his career.

Loss of Face is all important to some in that region and he had also made huge losses on his and his parent's investments so was both professionally and personally a deeply troubled individual.

If Tsu had intent to suicide he would have covered his tracks by getting his wife to meet the flight and he would have acted normally on the turnround in Jakarta as he knew that this would be looked into. He also knew that with both the FDR and CVR CB's pulled ( something he had done previously!!) that in a dive with full power on that it would be impossible to prove exactly the cause of the incident.

[CAPTAIN WOOBLAH]

So you guys are saying that Tsu was a brilliant genius that pulled off the crime of the century by murdering 103 people. Covering his tracks and destroying all evidence. I just don't buy it. It's too brilliant a plan. Something is amiss.

[nortwinds]

The Truth about Silkair MI 185

Thank you Captain Wooblah. I also do not buy it and never have.

Also Slaverdude, I fully agree that there is no reason why either pilot had any thought of suicide or murder when they got up that day, when they took off in MI 185, or even right up to the pulling of the CBs. It was only in the next final minute that something disasterous went wrong.

Looking at the NZ Evening Standard of 15/16 November 1995, it quotes the copilots' flying school Students' Association calling for "full and frank disclosure" of the educational investigation of the flying school with the school refusing and citing commercial sensitivities.

The NZ Ombudsman Sir Brian Elwood was therefore called in by the newspaper but even he could not access 3 of the 23 recomendations being kept secret.

The newspaper also reported that when the NZ CAA was finally moved to audit the school and withdraw its approval, the school took out a court injunction to not just stop the withdrawal but prevent the CAA authority from even publicising its decision to withdraw approval.

The Omsbudsman also said that evidence of the investigations had already been destroyed to prevent substantiation of some of the comments made.

There was therefore already in place a culture of cover-up over the training and assessment of the copilots that even the Ombudsman, who is a very powerful independent NZ government official, was unable to overcome.

Given this known background of both problems with the training and assessment of the copilots, and of cover-up, it is not surprising that the copilot of MI 185 has not yet been properly investigated and that the investigations to date therefore remain officially inconclusive.

It is ironic that in that era of the early days of Human Factors (for which Erebus was a major trigger) SilkAir MI 185 conveniently and immediately reverted right back to "Pilot eror - blame the Captain" so that everbody else could walk away.

[parabellum]

I fully agree that there is no reason why either pilot had any thought of suicide or murder when they got up that day, when they took off in MI 185, or even right up to the pulling of the CBs.

Nortwinds - Pure conjecture, manufactured to suit your strange, very strange agenda.

[CAPTAIN WOOBLAH]

Gentlemen,

Just as I think that The murder plan was too brilliant. I do not think the FO's training school or his initial flight training had anything to do with the accident.

Silkair and it's training syllabus would have professionally assessed his abilities and would not have let him clear to line unless he met the company standard which is as high a standard found anywhere in the world.

[parabellum]

Thank you Captain Wooblah, well said and so very true.