Dead pilot's father pursues airline

By Matthew Dearnaley

The father of an Auckland pilot killed in the Silk Air plane crash over Indonesia in 1997 is challenging the airline's denial of culpability after a disturbing accident report.

Derek Ward, whose co-pilot son Duncan was one of two New Zealanders killed in the crash, sent a barrage of written questions yesterday to the Singapore Airlines subsidiary.

Silk Air said it was "saddened and disturbed" to learn from investigators that human intervention may have caused its Boeing 737 to crash into a Sumatran river just before Christmas 1997, killing all 104 on board.

An interim crash report is understood to have been referred to police in both Indonesia and Singapore.

The airline has also issued details of previous flying incidents which led, in one case, to the demotion of the Boeing captain, Tsu Way Ming, and in another to disciplinary counselling.

But it said it was unaware that Captain Tsu had been in financial strife, as suggested by the Indonesian Aircraft Accident Investigation Commission, and had no previous qualms about his fitness to fly.

The Indonesian commission, being assisted by United States and Australian investigators, found that the Boeing's horizontal stabiliser had a nose-down trim on impact which could indicate a manual input from the cockpit.

There was no indication that anyone else was in the cockpit apart from the two pilots before the voice recorder stopped.

Suicide has long been unofficially suggested in aviation circles as the cause of the crash, given the unexplained failure of both the cockpit and flight data recorders.

Silk Air confirmed that Captain Tsu had deliberately turned off a voice recorder before takeoff on an earlier flight, an action which earned him a demotion.

But it said from Singapore that this was not a safety hazard and should be judged with two other noteworthy incidents in the context of an otherwise-satisfactory flying record.

Mr Ward has, however, sent a 36-point letter to Silk Air asking it to confirm several other alleged incidents which he believes should have alerted the airline that Captain Tsu was emotionally troubled at the time of the crash.

And he has questioned the level of psychological screening the company had in place to ensure passenger safety.