The families of six victims - from Singapore, Malaysia, the United States and Britain - originally lost their highly-publicised case when the courts exonerated the regional carrier from liability in October.

"The appeal has been dismissed with costs," a spokeswoman for the plaintiffs' lawyer told Reuters.

The plaintiffs' lawyer Michael Khoo had presented the case in the Court of Appeal last month but judgement was reserved.

Flight MI 185, piloted by Captain Tsu Way Ming, plunged into the Musi River in Sumatra during a routine flight from Jakarta to Singapore killing 104 people on December 19, 1997.

Most of the other affected families accepted compensation from SilkAir amounting to US$200,000 per victim which barred them from further legal action.

In October, the plaintiffs' lawyer Khoo had painted a picture of an aircraft that was deliberately put into a nosedive.

Air traffic controllers did not receive a distress call from the plane, which was cruising in clear weather.

Investigators found that the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder had stopped minutes before the Boeing 737-300 went down - prompting rumours of pilot suicide.

Lawyers for SilkAir had said that the plaintiffs had not been able to prove the pilot or co-pilot intended to commit suicide or had been reckless with the plane.

The judge subsequently ruled that the plaintiffs' legal action rested on circumstantial evidence.

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