The same thing had happened 17 years ago on a SilkAir flight

Published: March 28, 2015 at 12:38pm

A reader has written in to remind me that something similar to the Germanwings/Andreas Lubitz episode had happened back in December 1997 on a SilkAir flight from Jakarta to Singapore.

In this case it was the captain and not the co-pilot who deliberately put the plane into a nose-dive into the Musi River in Indonesia, killing all 104 people on board. He had locked out his co-pilot.

He was a former military pilot and instructor who almost died but lost three of his squadron mates during a military training flight 18 years earlier, on the same date – 19 December.

He had been disciplined six months earlier by the airline for a high-risk, too-rapid landing which upset his passengers. And he was in heavy debt because of share-trading losses.

The events were simulated on the Discovery Channel’s Air Crash Investigations.