Singapore Airlines was regarded as the world's safest carrier. SCOTT MACLEOD and agency reporters look at what went wrong.
Just before midnight on a wildly wet Tuesday night in Taiwan, the cleanest air safety record in the world dissolved in a fireball on the tarmac of Chiang Kai-shek Airport.
Singapore Airlines flight SQ 006 from Taipei to Los Angeles exploded in a gale and killed 78 people.
It was the first time the airline - long considered the world's safest - had suffered a serious accident, let alone a death, and it is bound to raise serious questions about safety standards at the airport and with the airline. The two most obvious questions are:
Why did the Boeing 747-400 jumbo jet try to take off in a typhoon?
Why was a tyre apparently lying on the runway?
Crash investigators say it is far too early to speculate on the accident, but survivors have given harrowing accounts of what happened.
The jumbo jet sat in wet darkness as 159 passengers and 20 crew boarded for the 15-hour flight to Los Angeles, a daily service. They had come from all over the globe - from India, Mexico, Vietnam, Australia, New Zealand, the Canary Islands and 13 other countries.
Outside, Typhoon Xangsane was raging. The storm had gathered off the coast of the Philippines on Saturday, then moved steadily north and had cast its eye just south of the island by 4.18 am (NZ time), when the four-engined jet started its takeoff. Some of the passengers were nervous. Australian grandmother Helen Broadfoot was surprised that the plane was taking off at all.
"I was shaking because there was so much movement in the plane," she said.
At first everything went smoothly, but at some point, things went wrong.
Probably the plane hit a tyre on the runway. Singapore Airlines said Malaysian pilot C. K. Foong, who with 11,235 flying hours is highly experienced, reported hitting an object on the tarmac.
Accounts of what happened next are confused.
Jon Diaz, another survivor, said that he could not believe the plane would take off in such bad weather.
"It seemed to me like we were just getting ready to lift off and it felt like we hit something.
"And the next thing we know the whole plane was shaking and gliding. It burst into flames right next to me. The whole side started to split and then it slid to a stop.
"There were flames everywhere and smoke everywhere and I ran to the door and there were two girls trying to open the door and it was stuck.
"I hit the door with my shoulder, it popped open and I helped the folks get out and the slider started to inflate."
Some passengers said they noticed nothing wrong until just after the plane took off, but many of the other survivors said the jumbo started shaking and twisting while it was still on the runway.
One of the most concise accounts was from a passenger who said the plane snaked along the runway for nearly a minute before there was a "sudden noise," the inside lights died and the fuselage started to fall apart.
Most reported the plane was shaking just after takeoff. Then there was a sudden bang in the front of the plane and a fireball swept down the cabin. Some terrified passengers were showered with debris.
American survivor Richard Maneth, aged 39, said the plane rolled to the left as it became airborne and he saw flames shooting down that side of the fuselage, while New Zealand survivor Tonia Joy said "flames came so fast down both sides of the plane."
The Boeing hit the ground near the end of the runway, split into three pieces and caught fire.
Mrs Joy, from Wellington, hurt her back as she jumped from the top of the wreckage.
Survivor Paul Blanchon said: "I was in the rear section. It seemed to turn over several times. We ended up on our side and passengers on one side were all up in the air.
"People were trying to get the back emergency exit door open but we couldn't do that. We tried to get to the front but we realised the whole plane had broken in two.
"We tried to get as many people as we could out of the rear section. When I got out there was a gentleman trapped beneath the tail section.
"There was smoke and flames blowing from the other section engulfing the tail section ... it was very difficult to communicate."
Emergency crews battled winds as they rushed to the scene through pelting rain. They found dozens of survivors with bad burns.
Television reports showed frantic scenes at a hospital as medics lifted injured survivors from ambulances.
News of the crash was broken to Singapore Airlines chief executive Cheong Choong Kong as he arrived in Christchurch, where he had flown for the Air New Zealand annual meeting.
He held a hasty press conference, skipped the meeting, and rushed back to Singapore.
At the Air New Zealand meeting - Singapore Airlines holds a 25 per cent stake in the company - shareholders paid respects to the victims with a brief silence.
In Singapore, officials set up a crisis centre at Changi airport. A handful of relatives, some in tears, were led to a cordoned-off area.
At the Los Angeles airport, officials set up rooms for those arriving to meet friends and family.
Speculation about the crash started immediately. One of the first reports was that the Boeing hit a China Airlines plane on takeoff, but that was later denied by Taiwanese minister Li Yi-yang.
An airline official said investigators found a wheel near the smash that did not belong to the plane - and which could be the object Captain Foong claimed to have hit before takeoff.
Nobody seemed to know how the tyre got there, or why airport staff did not spot it on the runway.
The Herald spoke to a former pilot who thought the most likely cause of the crash was variable winds, or windshear.
He said a plane taking off into a 50 km/h wind at 100 km/h in relation to the ground would have an airspeed of 150 km/h. If the wind suddenly stopped, the plane would be travelling too slowly, and would simply drop from the sky.
The pilot, who refused to give his name, said he once crashed a plane because of windshear.
Another retired pilot, who flew 747s, supported the windshear theory but said that the weather - with winds averaging 74 km/h - sounded too weak to drop a jumbo jet unless it was stirred up by a thunderstorm.
He would be surprised if a stray tyre could bring down the jumbo.
"The 747 is a tough, rugged aeroplane, one of the best ever built, and Singapore Air tends to have new ones," he said.
The plane that crashed was, in fact, one of Singapore Airlines' newest.
The airline is the world's biggest user of 747-400s and has had a near-perfect safety record since it was formed from another regional carrier in 1972. None of its planes had ever crashed and none of its passengers or crew had ever died in an accident.
Nor had anyone ever died in a 747-400 at any time.
For years, Singapore Airlines has been one of the world's most profitable airlines. The national carrier enjoys a young fleet of modern aircraft and general growth in seating capacity over the last four years.
At its launch in October 1972, Singapore Airlines had a modest fleet of 10 aircraft, a staff of 6000 and a route network spanning 22 cities in 18 countries.
Today, Singapore Airlines flies to more than 90 cities in more than 40 countries. While most Asian airlines suffered badly during the 1997 Asian economic crisis, and many are now struggling with high fuel prices, Singapore Airlines has had 28 years of profitability.
One of the few setbacks the airline suffered before Tuesday night occurred on December 19, 1997. A Boeing 737 from subsidiary SilkAir was cruising over Indonesia at 35,000 feet when it suddenly nosed down, diving at supersonic speeds until it smashed into a river, killing all 104 people aboard.
Today, as investigators sift through the wreckage of Flight SQ 006 on the tarmac at Taipei, everyone will be asking why a plane from the world's safest airline became a fiery, broken heap in a tropical storm.
Fiery end to a perfect record
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