Air Disaster Amid Typhoon in Taiwan

While Pan Chi-hsiang waited to board Singapore Airlines Flight 006, the passengers in line with him made nervous small talk. Outside the window they could see 90 km/h gusts of wind from an approaching typhoon fluttering the wings of their waiting jumbo jet. An American passenger kidded that Pan, who was assigned to the last row, could at least look forward to surviving if the plane crashed. Pan jokingly offered to sell him his boarding pass.

 

Pan might not be alive now if he had made that deal: barely 20 minutes later, the Boeing 747-400 rumbled down the wrong runway at Taipei's Chiang Kai-shek airport, struck concrete barriers meant to block off construction equipment, clipped a back-hoe, flipped over and exploded in a ball of fire. Seventy-nine of the flight's 179 passengers and crew died on impact, including most of those who, like the American who joked with Pan, were sitting in the middle section of the jet. Two more passengers later died after being rushed to the hospital, while another 52 suffered injuries including horrific burns from flaming jet fuel. The crash—the first fatal accident in the 28-year history of Singapore Airlines—left wreckage strewn across the tarmac and hard questions hanging in the air. 

Read Full Article »


Comment
Show comments Hide Comments


Related Articles