It’s hard to forget flight SQ006, even more so for Farzana Abdul Razak, one of the cabin crew who survived the deadly ordeal. On the night of Oct 31, 2000, Los Angeles-bound Singapore Airlines flight SQ006 taxied into a closed runway at Taipei’s then-Chiang Kai-shek Airport. It crashed into construction equipment during take-off and caught fire, killing 83 of the 179 people on board.
Madam Farzana was only 18 years old and just months into her new job at that time. Her dreams and aspirations went up in flames together with the ill-fated aircraft, when 45 per cent of her body was severely burnt by the blaze.
She underwent 11 skin graft operations to remove the scars, but that was just the beginning of the road to recovery – one that was mired by anger and a long bout of depression.
In the third episode of “The Newsmaker”, Madam Farzana looks back and recounts her ordeal. She also has a word for the pilots who caused the deadly mishap.
The driver who caused a horrific crash on the Central Expressway (CTE) on National Day two years ago that killed a Singaporean and three South Koreans was sentenced to the maximum five years’ jail and disqualified from driving for 20 years today (June 19).
Toh Cheng Yang, 35, had committed the “ultimate traffic offence” by driving so dangerously that he caused four deaths and nearly wiped out an entire family, said District Judge Low Wee Ping.
His culpability is among the most serious and falls within the band of cases for which the maximum sentence should be imposed, said the judge, who noted that the only mitigating factor was his timely plea of guilt.
“You also committed one of the most reprehensible traffic offences. You drove under the influence of drugs,” added DJ Low.
Toh was found to have consumed five to 15 times the therapeutic level of a sedative drug called nitrazepam, which was also more than twice the amount that would produce toxicity.
On Aug 9, 2013, Singaporean trainee pilot Amron Ayoub, 23, was driving his girlfriend Song Jisoo, 24, and her family to Changi Airport for a flight to Hong Kong when a car tyre went flat. They stopped on the chevron marking the Yio Chu Kang exit on the CTE to retrieve the breakdown sign and tools from the car boot, and did not have the hazard lights on.
Amron, his girlfriend and her parents, who were standing behind the car, were killed after Toh plowed into them.
Part of the arm of Song’s mother Kim Mee-Kyung was sheared off, while the others suffered near-amputations and multiple fractures. Song’s older brother Seounghwan, a professional golfer, was unscathed as he was standing beside the car.
After Toh pleaded guilty to one charge of dangerous driving resulting in the deaths and another charge of driving under the influence of drugs last month, DJ Low had adjourned sentencing, saying he was too shaken upon seeing photographs of the accident to make a decision.
Today, Toh’s lawyer Abdul Hamid Sultan indicated that his client would be lodging an appeal but would begin serving time in jail.
At 4.20AM on Sunday, Ms Nassida Nasir woke up in panic.
Her husband, Mohamed Taufik Zahar, was not at home as they had argued – and something felt wrong.
Frantic, the 32-year-old starting calling and texting him.
“C u nvr pick up my cal..im suspecting a lot of things… as long u are safe,” read one message at 4.22am.
Minutes later, Taufik, 34, would be stopped at a police checkpoint in Ardmore Park near Shangri-La Hotel, where a summit attended by defence chiefs was being held.
When he crashed his red Subaru Impreza through the roadblock, the police opened fire, killing him.
Officers found packets of heroin in the car. Taufik’s two passengers – Mohamed Ismail, 31, and Muhammad Syahid Mohamed Yasin, 26 – were arrested and, on Monday, charged with drug trafficking.
The police said Taufik was wanted for failing to attend court for an offence of criminal intimidation. He also had a criminal record.
The incident that made international headlines cost Ms Nassida the father of her young child. Yesterday, at her parents’ flat in Tampines, she told The Straits Times in a shaky voice about how she first met him in primary school, lost touch, but met again and started dating him two years ago.
Back then, Ms Nassida was a club dancer and Taufik worked as a nightclub bouncer.
“I danced at clubs, and he was a bit of a gangster,” she said. They would party nightly and take party drugs.
Then their relationship turned serious. “We stopped partying and started staying at home to enjoy each other’s company,” said Ms Nassida.
She became pregnant last year and they got married two months ago, just after their daughter was born.
“He’s stubborn. We were prepared for him to go (to prison) for a year,” said Ms Nassida, referring to his offence of criminal intimidation.
After that, they planned to start a new life.
Meanwhile, Taufik worked as a logistics mover, making about $60 a day.
He was passionate about cars but did not have a driver’s licence, she said. “He took the driving test three times and failed. Maybe God knew something like this would happen.”
Since she had a licence, Ms Nassida rented a Subaru for $260, planning to take the family to Sentosa on Sunday. Instead, they argued just after midnight and he stormed off with the car.
“I think what the police did was right but it’s not fair to me,” she said.
“I didn’t get a chance to kiss him goodbye. My daughter won’t get to see him when she grows up.”
A Germanwings plane carrying 150 people has crashed in the French Alps on its way from Barcelona to Duesseldorf.
The Airbus A320 – flight 4U 9525 – went down between Digne and Barcelonnette. There are no survivors, officials say.
The “black box” flight recorder has been found, France’s interior minister says. The cause of the crash is not known and the plane sent no distress signal during an eight-minute descent.
Among the passengers were 16 German pupils returning from an exchange trip.
Germanwings, a low-cost airline owned by Germany’s main carrier Lufthansa, has an excellent safety record. French, Spanish and German leaders have expressed shock.
A recovery team reached the site, in a remote mountain ravine, earlier on Tuesday. Their work was called off in the evening and will resume at first light on Wednesday, the French interior ministry said.
Bruce Robin, a prosecutor from Marseille, told the Reuters news agency that he had seen the wreckage of the aircraft from a helicopter.
“The body of the plane is in a state of destruction, there is not one intact piece of wing or fuselage,” he said.
Key points
Weather reportedly good when A320 Airbus came down
Plane descended rapidly but sent out no distress signal
White House says no suspicion of terrorism
Helicopters ferried recovery teams to a crash site marked by smouldering debrisSections of the aircraft could be identified amid the wreckage strewn down the mountainside
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier was also flown over the crash site and described it as “a picture of horror”, the Associated Press news agency says.
Officials believe 67 of those aboard the plane were German citizens. Forty-five of the passengers had Spanish names, Spain’s deputy prime minister said.
The passengers included a German school class on its way back from an exchange trip as well as two opera singers, Maria Radner and Oleg Bryjak.
Ms Radner was travelling with her husband and baby.
The flight was also carrying citizens of Australia, Turkey, Denmark, the Netherlands and Belgium. UK Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said it was “sadly likely” that some British nationals were on board.
The relatives of passengers aboard the flight received a police escort at Barcelona airportNews of the crash was also greeted with shock at Duesseldorf airportOnly small sections of the aircraft survived the impactRecovery workers will return to the site on Wednesday morning
Sandrine Boisse, a tourism official from the ski resort of Pra Loup, told the BBC that she believed she had heard a strange noise in the mountains at around 11:00 (10:00 GMT).
“At first we thought it was on the ski slopes, an avalanche, but it wasn’t the same noise,” she said.
Analysis: Richard Westcott, BBC Transport correspondent
We know the aircraft went from a normal cruising height of 38,000 feet to crashing in the mountains in just eight minutes. One pilot told me that is twice the normal descent rate, but he also said that the aircraft is capable of coming down even more quickly and still being okay.
In an emergency, the pilots’ first priority is to fly the plane, but as soon as they have some control they are trained to make an emergency call. That didn’t appear to happen in this case, which suggests the pilots were coping with something so catastrophic they never had time to radio in a mayday, or turn to find the nearest runway.
It’s still too early to know anything for certain, but that might point to both engines failing, a fuel problem or something critical breaking off the aircraft.
The plane began descending one minute after it reached its cruising height and continued to lose altitude for eight minutes, Germanwings managing director Thomas Winkelmann told reporters.
He said the aircraft lost contact with French air traffic controllers at 10:53 at an altitude of about 6,000 feet.
The plane did not send out a distress signal, officials said. Earlier reports of a distress call, quoting the French interior ministry, referred to a message from controllers on the ground.
The White House has said there is no evidence so far of a terror attack. A Lufthansa official said they were assuming for the time being that the crash had been caused by an accident.
The Airbus A320 is a single-aisle passenger jet popular for short- and medium-haul flights.
Rescue workers and gendarmes assembled at an airfield near the crash siteThe Germanwings airliner, similar to this one, had been flying to Duesseldorf in Germany
