A COMBINATION of pilot error and faulty airport facilities was probably to blame for last year's Singapore Airlines plane crash that killed 83 of the 179 people on board at Taipei's international airport, according to a preliminary government report released Feb 23.

Lights were broken and markers were missing for a runway that should have been used by the jet, which slammed into construction and maintenance equipment while taking off on the wrong airstrip, Taiwanese officials said.

The report also provided new details that pointed to apparent mistakes by pilots of the Los Angeles-bound Flight SQ006, who tried to take off in a rainstorm caused by an approaching typhoon on the night of October 31.

One guiding light that could have helped direct the Boeing 747-400 to the correct runway was not working and another was too dim, chief crash investigator Kay Yong said. The lights were located at the point where the pilots mistakenly turned on to the wrong runway, parallel to the one they were supposed to use.

There was also a line painted on the route leading to the closed runway but none leading to the correct runway, Ms Yong said. "According to international standards, where there are lights, there should be a line," she said.

Chang Kuo-cheng, deputy director of the Civil Aeronautics Administration, which runs the airport, said he could not comment until investigators released a final report.

He said all airport facilities were installed according to international standards when it was built in 1979. "But I can't say if there were any changes in the guidelines that we didn't know about," Mr Chang said.

Air traffic control did not have ground radar and had no way of knowing during the storm that the pilot was on the wrong runway.

It was not blocked off because it was still used by taxiing planes, the report said. But Ms Yong said the pilots had said five times that they believed they were on the right runway. They were also warned at a preflight briefing that one runway was closed.

The report said the pilot decided to activate the plane's para-visual display (PVD) due to the low visibility. The PVD should light up when the aircraft is lined up on the correct runway. Ms Yong said it did not light up and the pilot decided to ignore it.

Before taking off, the pilot said he could see the runway clearly, the report stated.

The Feb 23 report was merely "presenting all facts gathered", and further analysis of the facts was needed to identify the actual cause of the crash of the Boeing 747-400, Ms Yong said.

"To answer why the accident happened, we need to conduct further analysis of the findings," she said, adding the final investigation report of the accident would be released in December.

Singapore Airlines, which has pledged to take full responsibility for the crash and has offered compensation to the injured and victims' families, said it would wait for Taiwan aviation authorities to complete the second phase of investigation into the crash before commenting further. It has agreed to send the pilots back to Taiwan if needed for a trial.