An SIA flight touched down at Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) during a downpour Nov 10, only to take off again, the New Straits Times said.

The pilot cited the bad weather and circled the airport for several minutes before announcing the plane would return to Singapore for refuelling, the newspaper said.

The SIA plane had been given the green light to land by air traffic controllers, and was the only flight that day with landing difficulty.

An airport official was quoted as saying that six domestic and six international carriers landed safely at about the same time.

The daily said a similar incident occured Nov 6 when an SIA flight from Kuala Lumpur to Changi airport in Singapore aborted its landing at the last minute because of a thunderstorm and diverted to the Indonesian island of Batam.

SIA suffered its first crash in its 28-year history when a Los Angeles-bound Boeing 747-400 with 179 people aboard crashed on takeoff Oct 31 in Taipei, killing 82 passengers.

Findings showed that the aircraft took off from a runway closed for repairs, slamming into heavy equipment and exploding into flames.

SIA has accepted full responsibility for the accident, blamed on pilot error, but sought further answers on why the pilot, with more than 11,000 hours of flying experience, put flight SQ006 on the wrong runway.