One-Two-GO Airlines Flight 269 - Investigation

Investigation

At the time of the crash, speculation rested on the pilot’s decision to land in poor weather conditions and on the airport’s wind shear detection system which was not operational that day. In the weeks after the crash, the lead crash investigator, Vuttichai Singhamany, continued to indicate wind shear as the likely cause.

The US NTSB takes an interest in commercial airline incidents involving US manufactured aircraft, and they arrived on site within days. The NTSB inspected the aircraft, the crash scene, interviewed survivors and witnesses. They took information obtained from the flight data recorder (“black box”) to the United States for analysis. The flight data recorder immediately yielded significant facts about the flight, including:

• Wind shear was not a factor in the crash
• First Officer Montri was the flying pilot
• Captain Arief’s radio communications with ATC were error prone
• Many Crew Resource Management (CRM) issues occurred within the cockpit
• There was no conversation between the pilots during the final 18 seconds of flight.
• The go-around (TO/GA) button, used to configure the aircraft for go-around, had not been pushed
• The throttle was pushed to take-off power only 2 seconds before impact.

Yet Thai investigator Director-General Vuttichai announced that NTSB had notified his department saying that it was “unable to determine the cause of the accident” and “No punishment will be imposed on any agency or personnel after completion of the investigation because the accident was beyond control”.

Meanwhile, immediately after the crash, an unidentified pilot claiming to work at One-Two-GO or Orient Thai Airlines made a posting on a pilots’ internet site detailing incompetence and corruption at the airline. His claims quickly spread on the internet and came to the notice of an Australian Channel 9. A Channel 9 crew, including Nick Farrow and Sarah Ferguson, came to Thailand to investigate. Their resulting program, broadcast in November 2007, detailed the accusations of maintenance fraud and specifically by CEO Udom Tantiprasongchai, coercion and bribery of pilots to fly illegal hours leveled by a number of One-Two-GO.

Furthermore, the program contained an interview with lead Thai investigator Director-General Vuttichai as he reviewed the daily flight rosters for One-Two-GO given to him by reporter Ferguson, documenting captain Arief and first officer Montri’s routes showing that both pilots had flown vastly beyond the legal limit for the week and for month of the crash. Director-General Vuttichai said he would demand an explanation for the fraud from One-Two-GO.

But the NTSB did not receive information about the flight rosters from the Thai investigators or from the airline.

In late February 2008, the victim’s families, concerned about the impartiality and transparency crash investigation, created a website and on-line petition called InvestigateUdom.com calling for a proper investigation into the root causes of the crash. The commercial aviation community responded with evidence, and the website soon became a repository of false statements and evidence of corruption within the airline, including

• Approved One-Two-GO re-currency check-rides *approved* by a chief pilot who was out of the country for the month
• The true daily work rosters August 2007 – September 16 for the One-Two-GO pilots showing
• An email from the One-Two-GO and Orient Thai’s flight scheduler to COO Cho Tsing Tsang, and CEO Udom Tantiprasongchai detailing the roster fraud provided to crash investigators and suggesting log book alterations to cover up the illegal flight of OG269.

Family members provided this material to the NTSB. As requested by the Thai Government, the NTSB ghost-wrote the crash report for the Thai authorities who thanked the NTSB for their assistance.