Pilots' or Airport's Fault?

Yahoo! Fit to post has an article on the reflection of a co-pilot of SQ006 - the plane that burst into flames after it hit a crane at a Taiwan Airport 10 years ago.

He talked about how the Taiwanese media haunted and hunted him down, no matter how well he hid himself, because the Taiwanese were trying to find someone to blame for the accident and wanted to point finger at the SQ pilots.

I didn't know what to make of it when I read about the accident 10 years ago. To me, it was a pure accident. I wasn't too bothered about whose responsibility it was.

Until a workshop I attended had the speaker casually mentioned about it.

She said that the SQ pilots were at fault.

Reason: The pilots should have questioned the control tower why there wasn't any lights on the runway when they didn't see them.

I don't work in a control tower or a cockpit. I don't know what the perogatives are. Should the control tower be certain of the plane's whereabout before it announces its takeoff? If it should, then why was it not properly informed? And the best person to inform it would have to be the main pilot. Then the fault would come back to the pilots.

If the visibility is bad, shouldn't the flight be cancelled? Who should have the final say in cancelling a flight? Is it not the pilot if he is already in the cockpit? A pilot who insists on flying despite low visibility - doesn't that make his judgement a poor one?

I clicked on the link provided by yahoo! Fit to post on Cyrano Latiff, the co-pilot, and it led me to a webpage dated 27 July 2002 on the departure of two of the pilots involved in the aircraft disaster, one being Latiff himself. Apparently, they were asked to leave the airline and they had their contract terminated by SIA.

No matter how I see it, it implies that SIA also felt that the pilots were at fault, although it did not openly say so.

The thread-starter posed the following questions:
Is SIA trying to appease the Taiwanese authorities? Are they disassociating themselves from the 2 pilots from future civil actions and embarassment? Or are they being 'considerate, kind and smart enough' in helping the pilots escape their suspended sentence?

My take:
If SIA was trying to appease the Taiwanese authorities, then it suggests that it had a guilty conscience. If not, it did not need to appease anyone, for the world-class reputation it held.

If they were disassociating themselves from the two pilots from future civil actions and embarrassment, then SIA indeed felt that the two pilots' incompetencies or failure to exercise proper judgement when flying had got them into hot soup, which means they did think that the pilots were at fault.

If they had been considerate and kind and smart enough in helping the pilots escape their suspended sentence, it suggests that SIA was sure that they would not be able to absolve responsibility from the accident if the pilots were sued by the Taiwanese authorities. This also points to the fact that they themselves thought the pilots were guilty of the fault.


Nobody would want to take the blame since it involved millions of dollars, and possibly more importantly, public confidence in the airline or airport would be shaken.

Of course, I am talking on hindsight. I won't know for sure what exactly transpired since I was neither the pilot nor someone working in the control tower.

The accident took 83 lives. It must have been a living hell for those alive.

I still remember a surviving passenger recounting,"The person seated beside me was shot up in flame all of a sudden." The image of that recounted scene was so vivid it would pop into my mind from time to time. I can imagine how traumatising that experience of watching someone who sits just beside you being burnt alive is.

I remember that SIA flight stewardess who could have escaped unscathed, but went back to help the passengers and had herself scourged on her face. Eventually, and miraculously, she got her pretty face back. She said she did not regret going back to help others. The horribly skeptical me wondered if she would say the same thing if she were disfigured by the incident. Something tells me she would - the interview she had when she was first burnt impressed me. She was calm and continued to reply the questions posed despite the burn.

Many flight attendants were badly traumatised. They could not go back to work for months.

I remember reading about them asking for the same paycheck for the months they were traumatised partly as compensation for the ordeal they went through. I am not sure if they got it. I hope they did.