Update: Garuda plane crash kills 22, dozens escape

The Straits Times, March 7, 2007


YOGYAKARTA (Indonesia) - Twenty-two people died but scores escaped after a Garuda passenger jet overshot the runway and burst into flames on landing in the Indonesian cultural capital of Yogyakarta on Wednesday.

Dozens of passengers leapt from the plane's emergency exits into surrounding rice paddy fields to escape the inferno, which reduced the plane to a smouldering wreck of twisted metal.

'Following the evacuation process, we found that 112 passengers survived while 21 passengers died,' national carrier Garuda Airlines said in a statement.

'From the crew, six people survived and one cabin crew member died.'

Earlier, Yogyakarta Provincial Secretary Bambang Susanto told Reuters that 48 bodies were recovered from the crash scene and one other person had died at the city's main medical centre.

The head of Indonesia's national health crisis centre, Rustam Pakaya, agreed with the Garuda figures.

Mr Pujobroto, chief spokesman for Garuda, said flight GA 200 was a Boeing 737-400 plane carrying 133 passengers and seven crew when it crashed at around 7am (8am Singapore time) after a scheduled flight from Jakarta.

One survivor told Reuters that passengers had been warned the flight would be turbulent and that most reacted calmly and orderly under the circumstances.

'As we approached the ground and I could see roofs from our window, the plane was still swaying and shaking,' said Ms Ruth Meigi Panggabean, who works for the aid group World Vision.

'Then the plane was slammed to the ground and skidded forward and slammed once again before it came to a stop,' she said.

The flight was carrying a group of Australian diplomats, government officials and journalists who had been accompanying Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, who was not aboard, on an official visit to Indonesia.

Mr Downer said five Australians were injured and another four unaccounted for - an air force liaison staffer, a police officer, an embassy staffer and a journalist.

Garuda's media office said the plane carried just eight Australians, as well as two Japanese, two Brunei nationals and seven other foreigners.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has ordered the chief security minister to investigate 'non-technical' matters related to the plane crash, Cabinet Secretary Sudi Silalahi told reporters.

However, Mr Downer and Australian Prime Minister John Howard said they had received no information that would suggest terrorism or sabotage was a factor in the disaster.

Tourist destination
Yogyakarta, around 440 kilometres southeast of the capital, Jakarta, is known as the cultural heart of Indonesia and is popular with tourists, although it is the off season at the moment. Its Adi Sucipto airport is known for its relatively short runway.

The crash came a day after two powerful earthquakes hit the neighbouring Indonesian island of Sumatra, killing 72 people according to the country's disaster management agency.

Crash survivor Din Syamsudin, the head of Indonesia's second-largest Muslim organisation, Muhammadiyah, told Elshinta news radio of his lucky escape.

'Some passengers wanted to get their hand luggage. I cried to them, 'Get out, get out',' he said. 'The plane was full of smoke. I just jumped from two metres high and landed in a rice field.'

He said the plane burst into flames soon after he escaped.

World Vision's Panggabean said under the circumstances, 'the passengers were fairly calm and the evacuation process was quite orderly'.

Survivors were taken to a number of local hospitals. 'We are treating 10 to 15 passengers. They are all fine. An 8 months pregnant woman is OK, and so is her baby,' said Ms Constantine, a nurse at Panti Rapih Hospital.

Plane over-speeding
Aviation disaster expert Robert Heath said aircraft speed might have been a factor in the crash.

'From what I can see so far the aircraft appeared to land intact and that may point to excess speed being a factor,' said Mr Heath, from the University of South Australia.

'The fire may have been caused by the nose wheel hitting things as it ran off the runway or engine destruction.' p>An airforce commander at the site said that the plane was travelling too fast and ran off the runway.

'The plane was too fast or overspeeding, so it ran about 300 metres off the runway,' First Air Marshal Benyamin Dandel told Detikcom news.

Indonesia has suffered from a string of transport accidents in recent months, including an Adam Air plane that disappeared in January with 102 passengers and crew on board, and a ferry sinking in late December in which hundreds died.

The series of accidents had sparked the government to set up special commissions to look at the state of transportation safety in the sprawling archipelago of 17,000 islands. -- AFP, REUTERS