Passenger group says DC-10 has design flaws

Press, 29 July 1989, Page 10

Passenger group says DC-10 has design flaws

NZPA-Reuter . Tripoli

The International Airline Passengers’ Association (1.A.P.A.) called on the United States Federal Aviation Administration yesterday to correct what it called inherent design flaws in the McDonnell Douglas DC-10, grounding the airliner if necessary.

The organisation, which has 100,000 members, made the plea after a Korean Airlines DC-10 crashed in Libya, killing at least 78 people and injuring 47 others but leaving 66 unhurt in the second disaster involving a DC-10 in nine days. Litfta said there was fog at the time and suggested that pilot error might be to blame. The LA.P.A. urged the United States to correct

“inherent design flaws” in the planes, if necessary grounding all the United States-made DC-lOs.-

An official Libyan statement said that as well as the fatalities 47 people were injured but 66 escaped unhurt when the Korean Airlines jet smashed through houses near the capital’s airport as it came in to land at 7.30 a.m.

The. official Libyan news agency, JANA, quoted aviation sources as saying the cause of the crash could have been a fault in the plane’s equipment or pilot error.

A technical commission was set up to investigate. JANA said visibility had been 240 m at the fogshrouded Tripoli airport when the airliner approached. JANA said all necessary

information was given to the pilot as the DC-10 neared Tripoli. “The decision to land or not to land, as is internationally known, depends on the captain of the plane alone.” An airport official said the DC-10 was told to divert to Malta due to the fog but the pilot replied: “I can land.”

One Libyan living near the crash site told Reuters: “(The plane) was like a bulldozer that pushed everything in front of it for at least a kilometre.”

Rescue workers were still pulling charred bodies from the wreckage of the United States-built jet overnight, more than 12 hours after the crash, and they said the death toll might, rise. Most passengers on the jet, flying from Seoul to

Tripoli via Bangkok and the Saudi Arabian city of Jeddah, were South Koreans. Three Japanese and seven Libyans were also on board. The Government said 30 of the 47 injured were in a critical state and the others were only slight hurt. Fourteen of the 18 South Korean flight crew survived, including the pilot.

JANA said earlier that 113 people were injured. This figure was believed to include 66 people who were rushed to Tripoli hospitals but were released immediately. “The pilot of a Soviet plane which had been given the same weather information as the South Korean plane an hour earlier had decided not to land and had diverted to Malta,” JANA said.