A killer in the Silkair cockpit?
'He is one of those who believes in giving the best to the task at hand, no matter the obstacles - the gung-ho never say die attitude. It is with great sadness that we play the last bugle call to such a fine officer and gentleman. He is fondly remembered and will be greatly missed. . .' Captain Kok Kalong, Terrence, Member of HQ 6th Division Among the hundreds of messages of condolence that poured into Singaporean Web sites set up to commemorate the deaths of 104 passengers and crew in the crash of Silkair Flight MI 185, the eulogy to Captain Tsu Way Ming was one of the most eloquent.
Tsu, a top gun in the Singapore Air Force for 17 years who was held in awe by many fellow officers, had been at the controls of a Boeing 737-300, the world's most commonly used passenger aircraft, when it fell into Indonesia's Musi River a week before Christmas last year.
Even Singaporeans who knew none of the men, women and children aboard the routine flight between Jakarta and the Lion City were touched: how, they asked, could such a disaster befall the airline of which they were so proud? There are many baffling questions from ill-fated Flight MI 185 still awaiting answers. But as an Indonesian-led crash investigation team comprising psychologists, engineers and aeronautical experts from Australia, the United States and Britain examine every conceivable mishap, every possible outcome, one strikingly chilling theory is standing out: that Tsu, 41-year-old husband of Evelyn and the father of Donald, Benjamin and Samson, deliberately launched Silkair's 10-month-old 737 into a steep spiral dive from 35,000 feet.
Reaching supersonic speeds of Mach 1.2, say aviation sources, the 737 plunged like a rocket under maximum thrust into a muddy section of the Musi River near the city of Palembang. Such was the speed and acute angle of descent that the sturdy aircraft, which had begun breaking up under the immense forces it was under, took about two minutes from its cruising altitude to impact.
'The wreckage,' said Brent Hayward, president of the Australian Aviation Psychology Association and an accident investigator, 'was like confetti.' If the worst fears of airline officials and investigators are confirmed (and they stress their inquiry is incomplete and thus inconclusive), Tsu will go down not just as a suicidal captain, but as a mass murderer who subjected his passengers and crew to a terrifying experience before they met their end.
'Jumping off a bridge or gassing oneself is a very different affair from killing yourself and 103 innocent people,' said Mr Hayward. 'Most people only want to harm themselves - they don't have violent thoughts towards others. If this is found to be suicide, it's much more complex. It's a very aggressive, possibly vindictive act aimed at getting back at someone or something. It's one thing to act against a company, it's another thing to act against all the people down the back of the plane who are relying on him to get from A to B.' One possible reason is 'a feeling of having been badly wronged. But it might be something more complex than that,' said Mr Hayward, like a personality disorder that would be uncovered 'by comprehensively sifting someone's background and going back years to pinpoint some sort of link or trigger'.