Hsiung Kuang-jung, CAA air traffic control director, told a news conferencee the report released Friday by investigators in Singapore was not truthful. Air traffic controllers at Chiang Kai-shek International Airport cleared the ill-fated plane after they'd received a voice report that it was ready to take off, Hsiung said.

"The green light was given after the crew had reported their readiness, not before the plane turned into the wrong runway, as was asserted in the Singaporean report," Hsiung said.

Singapore's investigators claimed the air controllers allowed the SQ 006 flight to take off when it was turning into a runway closed for repairs. Their clearance for takeoff reinforced the crew's belief that they were entering into the runway assigned to them, according to their report. The jumbo jet crashed in flames when it slammed into construction equipment and debris that blocked the runway.

CAA air traffic controllers, Hsiung stressed, "acted according to the book". They were not informed that a United Parcel Service cargo plane had almost ended up in the blocked runway before the crash, as claimed by the Singaporean investigators, Hsiung said. "We never received, nor found, any such record," he pointed out.

The unconfirmed UPS near-miss was cited by the Singaporean investigators to justify their claims that the closed runway was not properly marked, according to Hsiung.

Chang Kuo-cheng, CAA director general, said the independent Aviation Safety Council (ASC) investigated the plane crash in line with the international practice. The ASC sent a preliminary investigation to the authorities in Singapore, Chang said. Singapore claimed its investigators were not asked to participate in the ASC probe's final analysis.

Hsiung refused to comment on a plea from the International Federation of Air Line Pilots Associations that the Singapore Airlines pilots not be prosecuted. "It is up to the prosecutors to decide whether or not to indict the three pilots," Hsiung said.

After a one-and-a-half-year investigation, the ASC released its final report Friday, listing pilot errors and stormy weather as the probable causes of the crash, which claimed 83 lives. The ASC report, however, was criticized by Singapore Airlines for failing to "give due weight to the deficiencies found" at the airport. Jaspal Singh, deputy secretary of Singapore's Ministry of Transport, said that the report "does not provide a full and balanced picture".

Jim Hall, ex-chairman of the US National Transportation Safety Board who assisted in the ASC probe, said Saturday Singapore should respect Taipei's final report. Instead of ascribing blame, Hall said, the report is trying to find ways to improve air traffic safety. Accidents usually are the consequences of many factors combined, and both the country to which the crashed plane belong and the country where the crash took place should follow international norms in determining the causes of it.

Taiwan has done its part by probing the accident according to international practice and Singapore should now do its part, Hall said.

(Asia Pulse/CNA)

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