IN EARLY NOVEMBER 2000, air-crash investigators were racing to work out why a Singapore Airlines (SIA) passenger jet had tried to take off from the wrong runway at Taiwan's Chiang Kai-shek International Airport.
It was a tragedy that never should have occurred - with 83 people dead and dozens more badly hurt - and everyone wanted answers.
As the international team probed the wreckage and questioned the three cockpit crew who had survived the inferno on Flight SQ 006 on October 31, they received unexpected word from an unknown pilot. The man said he had to talk to them: he had information. Intrigued by the request, they later questioned him.
He told them that just days before SIA's Boeing 747-400 mistook the closed runway 05 Right for the correct, parallel and open runway 05 Left, he had almost made the same mistake. As the team worked on, another pilot came forward with a similar tale. Again, just days before Captain Foong Chee Kong had accelerated his aircraft into construction equipment parked on the closed runway, the second unnamed pilot said that he too had come close to making an identical, potentially fatal error.
These twin revelations - together with dozens of other chilling insights into SIA's first fatal incident - came to light late on Friday as investigators unveiled their final, supposedly conclusive insights. But rather than presenting a single view of what led to the carnage that rain-swept night, there were two starkly different reports.
Taiwan's Aviation Safety Council (ASC) - the lead body on the investigation - pointed the finger at the SIA pilots and the appalling weather at the time of the disaster as the 'probable causes' of the crash. 'Those airport facilities did not lead the pilots out to the wrong runway,' said Yong Kay, Taiwanese probe chief, in effect exonerating the island's main aviation hub.