TOKYO, June 14 -- Japanese police Friday questioned crew members of Garuda Indonesian Airways about the circumstances that led up to a fiery inferno aboard a DC-10 as it tried to take off on a flight bound for Bali. A crew member of ill-fated Flight 865, which crashed on takeoff Thursday at Fukuoka International Airport, told police a pilot tried to hit the emergency brakes right after liftoff when he noticed fire coming from an engine on the right wing. Investigators suspect engine trouble and human error caused the accident, which killed three passengers and injured another 108. The aircraft's chief purser, Chanifan Hisyam, 43, told investigators he heard strange noises like raindrops before the plane took off. The plane, packed with holiday vactioners headed for Bali, taxied down a runway just past noon Thurdsay, but failed to make liftoff, skidding into a nearby field where it caught fire and broke in two. The back section of the fuselage was gutted by fire that engulfed the craft as many of the 260 passengers and 15 crew members made their escape. Among the injured were the pilot and a man walking along a roadway when the plane plunged across the thoroughfare into the field. Some passengers complained flight attendants did not provide proper safety instructions in Japanese even though they knew most of the passengers were Japanese nationals. All the flight attendants were Indonesians except for one interpreter. A few attendants were accused of leaving the craft before the passengers.
Japan's Transport Ministry officials said Friday all the passengers and crew memberswere accounted for. The airport reopened Friday afternoon, 24 hours after the accident. Transport ministry investigators and aircraft analysts suspected at least one of the three General Electric CF6-50C2 engines developed serious trouble immediately before takeoff. President Soepandi of Garuda Indonesian Airways and Indonesian Civil Aviation Director Zainuddin Sikado arrived in Japan Friday morning. Soepandi apologized to the Japanese people, saying he was sorry for the loss of three lives. Six investigators from the United States were expected to arrive Saturday to assist in the investigation. The group included three officials of the National Transportation Safety Board, one from the Federal Aviation Administation, one from aircraft-maker McDonnell Douglas Corp. and one from General Electric. Officials recovered a voice recorder and a flight recorder from the aicraft late Thursday night, which may prove key pieces of evidence in determining what caused the crash. According to the communication record between the tower and Flight 865, no trouble was reported until the aircraft failed to respond to the tower at 12:08 p.m. local time. A similar accident happened in the United States in July 1989, when a DC-10 aircraft of United Airlines had rear engine trouble and crashed on landing at an Iowa airport, killing 112.
