S.A. jet’s fiery end detailed

Press, 7 December 1987, Page 1

S.A. jet’s fiery end detailed

NZPA-Reuter Cape Town The flight engineer of a doomed South African jumbo jet said “we are going to die” as the plane plunged in flames into the Indian Ocean, the “Cape Argus” newspaper reported yesterday in Cape Town.

All 168 people aboard the South African Airways flight from Taiwan to Johannesburg, including many Japanese and Taiwanese, were killed when it crashed 10 minutes away from

a stop-over in Mauritius on November 28. j S.A.A. has / declined comment on speculation that the/plane was sabotaged, dr on eyewitnesses’ claims that they saw It drop from the sky in a ball of flame and that they heard an explosion. : The airline has also declined, pending an official inquiry, to release a tape recording of the last 15 mtautes of conversation between the crew and air traffic control at Mau-

ritius’s Plaisance airport. But the “Argus” said “informed sources” had revealed some of the tape’s contents and suggested that flames were sweeping through the plane as the pilot, Captain Dawie Uys,/Struggled in vain to keep it/ in the air long enough to reach the airport. S.A.A. has confirmed that Captain Uys asked the control tower to clear an emergency drop in his cruising altitude from 35,etoft to 14,608 ft and

later reported smoke in me cabin. The “Argus” reported that another crew member then said: “Look at the altitude” interpreting this to mean that the plane was banking uncontrollably and plunging seawards. Around the same time the flight engineer, Giuseppe Bellagarda, said: “We are going to die,” the “Argus” reported. Then radio contact was lost and the plane disappeared from radar screens.