Suspicion that the jumbo jet involved in Tuesday's Singapore Airlines disaster in Taiwan may have used the wrong runway heightened the agony yesterday as rescue workers removed the final bodies from the wreckage at Chiang Kai-shek international airport.
The airport authorities and Singapore Airlines gave different versions of what might have caused the death of 79 of the 179 passengers and crew. Nearly all those who died were killed instantly, trapped in their seats as the plane burst into flames. The plane's fuel tanks had been full for the 15-hour flight to Los Angeles.
More than 50 survivors were in hospital in Taipei, some suffering from severe burns and smoke inhalation. More than 40 scrambled to safety, including the three cockpit crew. Only one person remained unaccounted for last night.
Yesterday morning emergency teams surrounded the crash site with a ring of parked trucks and cars to try to prevent the galeforce winds from disturbing vital evidence. The two "black box" flight recorders have been located.
The plane had slammed back onto the runway while taking off in appalling weather, which was at first thought to have caused the crash.
But speculation mounted yesterday that the plane had hit an object on the scheduled runway, or might have taxied on to the wrong runway, one that was out of service, its edges littered with construction equipment.
Taiwanese officials, on the defensive for keeping the airport open as Typhoon Xangsane drew near, insisted that wind speeds and visibility levels were within proper limits. They hinted at pilot error, suggesting that the plane may have swerved off its runway and on to one which was under repair.
But a Singapore Airlines official said that the pilot, Capt C.K. Foong, a veteran with more than 11,000 hours of flying time to his record, "saw an object on the runway and he tried to take off . . . and he hit the object". If true, this would suggest negligence on the part of the airport.
The airline said there was no evidence that the plane used the wrong runway. But, as daylight dawned, it became clear that the wreckage lay on a parallel runway to the one that Flight SQ006 should have used for take-off.
"We cannot tell at this stage whether he took the wrong runway, or veered off to the supplementary runway and then hit the equipment," said the airport's head of traffic control, Mr Zhang Guozheng, yesterday.
There was speculation that the airport control tower would not be immediately able to identify a plane which had chosen the wrong runway, a mistake that would have been more easily made by a pilot in bad weather.
AFP adds: Air France and its insurers are to offer financial compensation "above the European norm" to the families of the victims of the Concorde crash on July 25th, in which 113 people died, the company announced yesterday.
Talks between the airline and lawyers for the 45 families of the German victims are due to resume tomorrow.
The lawyers had threatened to bring their demand for compensation before an American court if the insurers did not make an "acceptable offer" in settlement for the deaths of the 96 Germans who died aboard the plane along with 13 other passengers.
Compensation claims under American law often arrive at much larger settlements than those made in France or Germany.