Singapore Airlines has posted five reports - the last at 1pm (Singapore) on its website. It also posted the names of the crew and passengers. Eighty (76 passengers and four crew) are listed as "unknown/fatalities "


ALL the bodies have been recovered from the Singapore Airlines Boeing 747 jet that crashed in Taiwan Oct 31, with the final death toll at 78, according to aviation officials.

The plane, en route to Los Angeles, crashed in typhoon winds and burst into flames on take-off from Taiwan's Chiang Kai Shek airport at 11.18am (local time).

Sixty-nine people were killed instantly when the Boeing 747 plunged to the ground, and another pregnant woman died early today in hospital from her injuries, they said.

A Civil Aeronautics Administration official said: "There are 78 dead, 16 escaped injury, and 85 were hospitalised."

Government officials in Taipei initially said the Boeing 747 could have been brought down by strong wind shear, as it took off late yesterday in typhoon winds.

But cable television TVBS voiced suspicions that the plane may have taken off from the 05R runway rather than parallel 05L runway. The airport has two parallel runways and a third one used only occasionally as a backup.

The 05R runway has been closed for maintenance and repair. TVBS footage showed a heavy hydraulic mechanical shovel and some concrete blocks on it. The two-metre-high mechanical shovel had clearly been hit by something in the front.

Singapore Airlines spokesman Innes Willox told a briefing in Singapore "the flight commander on board the aircraft reported hitting an object on the take-off run".

No other details about the possible cause of the crash were available, he said.

An airline official said investigators found a wheel at the scene that did not belong to the SIA plane and added that it was unlikely that weather or mechanical problems were to blame.

Chang You-heng, head of Taiwan's Civil Aeronautics Administration, said the causes of the tragedy were "still not clear", but said "take-off was allowable under the weather conditions".

He said a black box flight recorder recovered from the wreck would be examined by the flight safety commission.

The crash is the first serious accident involving Singapore Airlines. In December 1997, 104 people died when a Boeing 737 operated by the airline's fully owned subsidiary, SilkAir, crashed in Indonesia.

A doctor at the Linkou Chang Gung Memorial Hospital told reporters that of the 33 people rushed to the hospital for treatment "six of the patients were in critical condition, suffering nearly 80 per cent skin burns".

A newly married Taiwanese couple, who were heading to Los Angeles for their honeymoon, recounted the horrific moment when the Boeing 747-400 series jet plunged on to the runway.

Yu Yen-hui, 30, told AFP: "I heard the sound of cracking when the plane started to take off.

"Then the plane tilted left and in a few seconds, balls of fire flew to us from the front part of the plane. I was so scared I started to run. I thought now we were dead."

Her husband Chen Tien-hsueh, 34, said: "At around 10.45pm shortly before the take-off, I asked the airplane crew was it safe to fly in the bad weather?

"They told me there was no problem although I felt the plane was shaking against the strong winds ... We chose the carrier because we thought it had had a good record in flight safety."

Grandmother Helen Broadfoot, 54, from Beaconsfield in Western Australia, who suffered minor burns to her hands and arms in the accident, said she was en-route to Detroit to visit her one-month-old grand-daughter.

She told Sky news she felt sick even before the plane took off.

"The weather concerned me," she said. "When we were on the runway I almost felt seasick because there was so much movement in the plane.

"I did wonder just how someone was going to be able to control that."

Taiwan's Vice Interior Minister Li Yi-yang denied reports the plane had hit a passenger aircraft from Taiwan's China Airlines (CAL) which had been on the ground.

"The CAL plane remained intact," Li told reporters.

Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian in a statement said he was "highly concerned about the accident and ordered responsible government agencies to launch a rescue".

He also asked the military to provide every possible assistance.

The passengers included 55 from Taiwan, 47 from the United States, 11 Singaporeans and Indians, eight Malaysians, five Indonesians, four Mexicans and four from Britain, two from New Zealand, Thailand, and Vietnam, and one from Australia, Canada, Cambodia, Germany, Japan, the Philippines, Ireland and the Canary Islands