Garuda pilot 'deliberately crashed plane'

By Stephen Fitzpatrick in Jakarta
Courier Mail July 24, 2008

PROSECUTORS will argue today that Garuda pilot Marwoto Komar deliberately crashed the Boeing 737-400 that ended up in a fireball off the runway at Yogyakarta, central Java, last year, killing 21 people, including five Australians.
A National Transportation Safety Committee report handed down late last year found that Captain Marwoto had failed to correct a "hot" landing profile during the final several kilometres of his approach to the airport on a routine Jakarta-Yogyakarta dawn commuter run.By the time he attempted to put the passenger jet on the runway, Captain Marwoto, 46, had ignored 15 automated audible cockpit warnings and several increasingly frantic pleas from his co-pilot, and was travelling at roughly twice the correct speed for landing, The Australian reports.
Fairfax journalist Morgan Mellish, Australian diplomats Liz O'Neill and Allison Sudradjat and Australian Federal Police officers Brice Steele and Mark Scott died in the crash.
They, as well as many of the Indonesians aboard the aircraft, were travelling to Yogyakarta for a visit by then foreign minister Alexander Downer.
Among the dignitaries Mr Downer was to meet in the historic city that day was prominent Muslim leader Din Samsyuddin - who survived the crash, having been able to scramble from the aircraft's wreckage before it burst into flames. Should prosecutors fail to prove Captain Marwoto deliberately crashed the jet, they will press lesser charges of negligently causing death, carrying a maximum sentence of seven years.