On this day: SilkAir plane crashes in South Sumatra, 104 people die

KOMPAS.com – Today 23 years ago, December 19, 1997, there was an accident in a Boeing 737-300 belonging to a Singapore airline, SilkAir. A total of 104 passengers and crew died.

Reported Daily kompasOn December 20, 1997, the plane crash with flight number MI-185 occurred around 4.30pm WIB.

The plane took off from Soekarno-Hatta Airport at 3:23 p.m. WIB, bound for Singapore. SilkAir is a subsidiary of Singapore Airlines, which specializes in serving cities in Southeast Asia.

The plane exploded in midair and shattered in the waters of the Musi River, Parit 12, Sungsang District, Musibanyuasin Regency, about 70 kilometers north of Palembang in South Sumatra.

The position of the accident of the SilkAir plane was confirmed at 02.26 ’50 South Latitude (LS) and 104.55 ’53 East Longitude (BT), or not far from the accident site of the BO-105 helicopter belonging to the National Police Headquarters, the November 8, 1997.

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CASS said contact with the plane was lost around 5:15 PM Singapore time (or 4:15 PM WIB). The plane was supposed to land in Singapore at 6:05 p.m. local time.

Until 11pm WIB, the fate of the 97 passengers and seven crew members was unknown. Director General of Civil Aviation Sikado, quoted from Between, estimates that all passengers and crew of the SilkAir plane were killed.

To quote the flight manifest, in the CFM56-3B2 twin-engine aircraft manufactured by a joint venture of General Electric (USA) and Snecma (France), there are 40 Singaporeans, two Japanese, 23 Indonesians, four Germans, 10 Malaysians, five Americans, five French, three English, as well as Bosnian, Austrian, Indian, Taiwanese, and Australian, respectively.

A Singapore Airlines (SIA) spokesperson, Rick Clements, told the news agency AFP He said six of the seven crew members were Singaporean and the other was a New Zealand citizen co-pilot.

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The Singapore police reportedly set security limits at SilkAir’s service department at Singapore Changi International Airport. In that place, the families of the victims waited for new news.

The cause of the helicopter crash was reportedly due to weather factors. At that time, the police helicopter also exploded, after its tail touched the water in an attempt to climb, after the water level was suspected of being land. This unfortunate helicopter is on its way to Aceh-Jakarta via Batam.

Quotation Kompas Daily, On December 21, 1997, Air Transport Director General Zainuddin Sikado explained that before the SilkAir plane crash, the last contact between the Soekarno-Hatta airport tower officers and the SilkAir plane at 16.13 WIB, after that there were no more.

According to his statement, the last contact was mediocre, there was no declaration of distress, because the pilot was about to change contact with Singapore.

As a general rule, if the contact has moved to Singapore, it means that the aircraft is under the control of the Singapore control tower and is no longer under the control of Cengkareng Airport.

The plane crash was only revealed after the Singapore tower asked Soekarno-Hatta Airport, Jakarta. Singapore officials told us that the SilkAir plane was supposed to land in Singapore at 1640 WIB, but had not yet landed.

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This was reinforced by a notification from Palembang that residents saw the plane crash at 4.30pm WIB.

For the investigations, the Indonesian Ministry of Transport formed a team, from Singapore also sent a rescue team to help, and an investigation team.

Reported Daily kompasOn December 28, 1997, the black box flight data recorder (FDR) of the Boeing 737-300 SilkAir was found by a SAR dive team at the crash site on Saturday (12/27/1997) around 12 p.m. 09:00 WIB.

Meanwhile, the black box containing the conversation in the cockpit (cockpit voice recorder or CVR) was only discovered on January 4, 1998, as reported. Daily kompas on January 5, 1998.

Quotation Daily kompasOn August 2, 1998, a bright spot appeared in the investigation into the downing of a Boeing 737-300 SilkAir.

It seems that the answer key is partly surface system, the part of the surface related to the control system. A proof is in the details microseconds When the 56.4-ton plane crashed, it disintegrated and killed 104 passengers and crew.

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Microsecond details, which are in the realm of millimeter dimensions and space, have become one of the research focuses of the Aircraft Accident Investigation Commission (AAIC).

However, to obtain this evidence, it still takes a long time.