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Indonesian crash pilots quizzed
13/03/2007 08:53 - (SA)
Jakarta - Police have started questioning the pilots of an Indonesian airliner that crash-landed last week and erupted in flames, killing 21 people, a spokesperson said on Tuesday.
"They came here voluntarily to be interviewed about the crash," Budi Santoso, a local police spokesperson in Yogyakarta, where the accident occurred, told AFP.
"It is not an investigation yet. We are still collecting evidence from the National Transport Safety Committee," he said.
Five Australians were among those killed in the grisly inferno, which was filmed by a cameraman who survived the accident. The disaster has triggered more criticism of Indonesia's blighted transport safety record.
Pilots 'start crying'
The pilots were being questioned in separate rooms, ElShinta radio said.
Both the pilot, Mohammed Marwoto Komar, and the co-pilot, Gagam Rokhmana, were in good condition, the Komar's lawyer said, adding "everything has been going well."
Earlier reports said the pilots had been suspended and were suffering from psychological trauma after the inferno.
"They can make small talk, but when asked to talk about what happened they will start to cry," Major Djunaidi was quoted as saying of the pilots in the Kompas newspaper.
The pilots reportedly said a huge gust of wind was responsible for the doomed landing, which witnesses said came at too fast a speed.
There has also been speculation that human error may have caused the crash-landing, during which the plane partially disintegrated.
The airliner's charred "black box" cockpit voice recorder was sent to the US for analysis after Australian air accident investigators said they were unable to extract information to get clues about the tragedy.
Investigators have already gleaned some information from a separate data log.
The disaster was the latest in a string of deadly transport accidents to hit Indonesia, an archipelago nation of 17 000 islands that depends on air and sea links.
- AFP
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