A United States agency is dispatching a team of five aviation safety investigators to assist Hong Kong authorities with the probe into a cargo plane crash that killed two airport workers on Monday.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said on Tuesday that it “is sending a team of five investigators to Hong Kong to assist the Air Accident Investigation Authority investigation into Monday’s runway excursion at Hong Kong International Airport involving a Boeing 747-418 owned by Turkish cargo airline ACT Airlines,” also known as Air ACT.
The NTSB is a US federal agency responsible for investigating civil aviation accidents in the country.
The Air Accident Investigation Authority (AAIA), a Hong Kong agency tasked with investigating civil aviation accidents, has already launched a probe into the incident.
A Boeing 747 cargo plane, owned and operated by Air ACT, collided with a stationary patrol vehicle after veering off the runway at Hong Kong International Airport in the early hours of Monday. Both the aircraft and the vehicle plunged into the sea. Two staff members inside the vehicle were killed.
The plane was “wet leased” to Emirates, the United Arab Emirates’ carrier, meaning that Air ACT provides the aircraft, crew and other services, according to local media.
Airport officers did not receive a distress signal from the cargo plane before the incident, Man Ka-chai, chief accident and safety investigator of the AAIA, said on Monday.
The crash forced the Hong Kong airport to close the north runway. It was reopened on Tuesday afternoon, approximately 36 hours after the incident.
“As the aircraft remains in the waters adjacent to the runway, the North Runway will be temporarily on standby mode, so as to facilitate the removal operation,” the Airport Authority said on Tuesday.
Air ACT said in a statement on Monday that all four crew members on board were “in good health.”
The Turkish air carrier also said it had reached out to the families of the deceased workers. The airline “is in close contact with the official teams and continues to fully cooperate with utmost diligence,” it said.
Fay Siu, the chief executive of the Association for the Rights of Industrial Accident Victims, which represents the families of the two deceased workers, told a radio programme on Wednesday that Emirates had not yet contacted the families.
Siu also urged authorities to speed up the investigation, saying that the families were worried that the aircrew members might leave Hong Kong ahead of a possible prosecution.
Speaking at the same radio programme, lawmaker Doreen Kong said the crew members could leave Hong Kong unless a court issues an order barring their departure.
She said families of the victims in similar incidents around the world would often file a civil claim to seek compensation but acknowledged that such a process could be difficult to pursue.
“The pilots would certainly leave [Hong Kong], wouldn’t they?” Kong said in Cantonese. “Why would they stay here for you to file a [civil] claim against them?”
Kong urged police to accelerate the investigation into whether the incident involved any offence, such as alcohol consumption, among the crew members.
HKFP has reached out to Emirates for comment.
