Malaysia Airlines Flight 653
| Malaysia Airlines Flight 653 | |
|---|---|
 A Malaysia Airlines Boeing 737-200 similar to the plane that crashed. |
|
| Accident summary | |
| Accident type | Intentional crash caused by the murder of the pilots |
| place | Tanjong Kupang Malaysia |
| date | 4th December 1977 |
| Fatalities | 100 |
| Survivors | 0 |
| Injured | 0 |
| Aircraft | |
| Aircraft type | Boeing 737-200 |
| operator | Malaysia Airlines |
| Mark | 9M-MBD |
| Departure airport | Penang airport |
| Destination airport | Kuala Lumpur Airport |
| Passengers | 93 |
| crew | 7th |
| Lists of aviation accidents | |
Malaysia Airlines flight 653 was a Malaysia Airlines domestic flight from Penang to Kuala Lumpur on which a Boeing 737 crashed on December 4, 1977 after the pilots were shot by a passenger.
plane
The aircraft was a Boeing 737-200 with the registration number 9M-MBD and was delivered in 1972 under the registration number 9M-AQO and used by Malaysia Airlines.
procedure
On the approach to landing at Kuala Lumpur Airport , the captain reported to the tower that an unknown hijacker was on board the aircraft. A few minutes later, the message followed that the machine was heading for Singapore. After communication with the pilots was broken at around 8:15 p.m. local time, residents in Tanjong Kupang reported explosions and burning debris at 8:34 p.m. These could later be unequivocally assigned to the Boeing 737.
Investigations
Although the aircraft hit the ground almost vertically and at high speed, the cockpit voice recorder was recovered from the rubble and examined. The footage shows that the crew complied with the hijacker's requests to fly the machine to Singapore and rose again to an altitude of 21,000 ft . The perpetrator locked the door to the cockpit from the inside. At this point in time, the aircraft was flying in a stable flight condition with the autopilot activated . Although the communication between the crew and the kidnapper seemed calm at first, the recordings were followed by three shots in quick succession. Presumably the perpetrator shot the two pilots first and then himself. The other recordings of the cockpit voice recorder gave the investigators reason to suspect that other people then tried to get into the locked cockpit. After deactivating the autopilot, presumably with the intention of keeping the aircraft under control, the machine was initially heavily stalled and then fell into an uncontrolled dive . The Boeing 737-200 crashed into a swamp near Tanjong Kupang. All 93 passengers on board, around 20 of them non-Malaysians, as well as the seven crew members were killed.
The identity of the perpetrator could never be clearly established.
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ Information about the aircraft at Airfleets.net (accessed on February 5, 2010)
- ↑ Investigators Searching Crash Site For Clues About Hijackers , in Observer-Reporter, December 5, 1977 (accessed June 2, 2015)
- ^ Accident report B-737-200 9M-MBD , Aviation Safety Network (English), accessed on February 16, 2020.
- ↑ Revisited after 36 years: Malaysia Airlines MH653 , in The Subang Jaya Post of December 4, 2013 (accessed June 2, 2015)
Coordinates: 1 ° 23 ′ 19.5 ″ N , 103 ° 31 ′ 53.2 ″ E