FAMILIES of six victims of a 1997 SilkAir plane crash have filed an appeal against a decision by the Singapore High Court last month rejecting their lawsuit that a suicidal pilot caused the accident, a report said Saturday (Nov 24).

The families' lawyer, Michael Khoo, has already appealed to the city state's highest court, the three-judge Court of Appeal, on Friday, the Straits Times newspaper said.

Khoo could not be reached for comment.

Justice Tan Lee Meng last month dismissed the civil suit filed by the families of the six victims of ill-fated SilkAir flight MI185 which crashed in Indonesia's Sumatra island, killing all 104 passengers and crew on board.

SilkAir is a subsidiary of Singapore Airlines Ltd.

The judge said in a 132-page written ruling that the families "did not discharge the burden in proving their assertions" that the crash was caused by intentional pilot action.

"At the end of the trial, it was evident that the cause of the crash of flight MI185 was not proven," Tan said.

A three-year investigation led by Indonesia's National Transport Safety Committee (NTSC) concluded there was insufficient evidence to determine the cause of the crash.

The Boeing 737 commercial plane crashed on December 19, 1997 on Sumatra island while en route from Jakarta to Singapore.

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