When it felt like his life was falling apart, his wife kept it all together.

That’s how former Singapore Airlines (SIA) First Officer Cyrano Latiff describes the uphill struggle to rebuild his life and career after surviving Singapore’s worst-ever aircraft disaster.

The 46-year-old Singaporean was one of three pilots who was in the cockpit of the ill-fated SQ006, which ploughed into heavy construction equipment as it tried to take off from Taiwan’s Chiang Kai-Shek airport on the night of 31 October, 2000.

83 of the 179 passengers on board were killed, including several crew members.
(Read details of the crash here.)

“It was a difficult period for my family as my three kids back then were still young,” Cyrano told Yahoo! Singapore as he described how his life went into a tailspin in the immediate aftermath of the crash.

“My three kids back then knew something had happened and they didn’t have any after thought or emotions because they were so young, and when I was away, my wife kept it all together,” he added.

“I must give all the credit to my wife. She is a very strong person who kept the family together,” he said of his wife, who works as a service quality consultant in the food and beverage industry. They met back in junior college and have been married for over 20 years.

Looking back, he recalled how his wife stood by him throughout.

“She made sure everything was taken care of, especially to the kids. It was a slightly similar situation when I left the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) as an infantry officer to take up this flying opportunity as a cadet pilot in 1994,” said Cyrano, who was with the SAF for 12 years.

“Back then, she supported the family while I spent my weekdays as a cadet pilot at Seletar on an allowance of S$1,000 a month before becoming a First Officer.”

“After the tragedy in 2000, we downgraded our living because I was terminated by SIA and we moved from our condominium to a 4-room HDB flat. We didn’t take any holidays, ate out less and cooked more at home and it was tough financially,” said Cyrano, who moved his family back to a condo a few years ago.

In 2003, though, Cyrano said he welcomed his fourth kid to the family, calling it a ”positive distraction” from the tragedy.

Today, his four children — three boys, one aged 7 and a pair of 19-year-old twins, and a daughter, 18 – are aware of what happened on that fateful, stormy night in Taiwan.

“They needed to understand what happened because there are implications as they are the children of the pilot of the crash but I am glad that they are not disturbed,” said Cyrano.

“My wife and I make it a point to explain to them what they read about in the papers,” he said.

Investigators collecting evidence from the crashed position 05R runway at Taipei Chiang Kai-shek International Airport on 3 Nov 2000. (AFP Photo)

From flying to teaching

Despite having to live with painful memories of the crash for the last decade, Cyrano reveals that flying has never been far from his mind.

“After completing my secondary school education, I applied to be a RSAF pilot trainee but was rejected and I thought my dream of flying was gone,” he said.

“However, the opportunity came up again when I was serving in the army. So I reapplied in 1994 to be a cadet pilot and when I was accepted, I finally had a chance to realise my dream of flying.”

When his services were terminated by SIA following the crash in 2002, he joined Lufthansa as an aeronautical consultant for two years before venturing into the food and beverage industry.

However, the teaching bug hit him in 2008 when Temasek Polytechnic’s (TP) Engineering School opened its doors for him to lecture in its Diploma in Aviation Management & Services (AMS), a three-year course that prepares graduates for an aviation career spanning airport management and operations, air traffic control and aviation safety and security.

“It was an opportunity TP gave and I took it. I had to adapt quickly and I turned my experiences into teaching modules, field trips and case studies for the students to take up when they go into the industry because it’s applicable. Teaching and sharing from a surviving flight crew who has gone through the whole nine yards is a very different and unique perspective altogether,” said Cyrano.

AMS’ section head, Abbas Ismail, himself a former airport management staff at Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS), feels that Cyrano’s presence has been a big boost for the course.

“He inspires the students and his experience is an asset. Back then, we were a new diploma programme and he was very supportive and contributed a lot of ideas,” said the 45-year-old Abbas. “With him being a pilot, it helped us a lot beyond our expertise with his first-hand account.”

Hi All, the article below, Remembering SQ006: 10 years on, features our very own lecturer, Mr. Cyrano Latiff. For all those who have not seen it, do take a read below or read it here (part 1) and here (part 2).

Part 2 will be up in the next post & stay tune for Part 3. (:

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Remembering SQ006: 10 years on

By Ion Danker - October 29th, 2010

From “surviving to winning” – that’s how former Singapore Airlines (SIA) pilot Cyrano Latiff describes how he’s turned his life around since surviving Singapore’s worst-ever aircraft disaster.

Then a First Officer with Singapore Airlines, Cyrano was one of three pilots in the cockpit of SQ 006, the SQ Boeing 747-412 jet that crashed on a rainy night at Taiwan’s Chiang Kai-Shek airport on 31 October, 2000.

83 of the 179 passengers on board died after the Singapore flight that was bound for Los Angeles ploughed into a cluster of heavy construction equipment as it tried to take off from a runway in bad, stormy weather. The plane broke into several pieces upon impact as explosions ripped through the aircraft’s entire middle section.

Among the dead were 26 Taiwanese, 24 Americans and 12 Singaporeans and Indians.
Speaking to Yahoo! Singapore in an exclusive interview ahead of the 10th anniversary of the crash this Sunday, Cyrano described the entire experience as “humbling”.

“After going through this, you realise everyone is important to you,” said the 46-year-old Singaporean, who had been flying with SIA for six years before the night of the tragedy.
After having his contract terminated by SIA in 2002, Cyrano joined Lufthansa as an aeronautical consultant for two years. He then ventured into the food and beverage industry before becoming a lecturer for the Diploma in Aviation Management & Services at Temasek Polytechnic’s (TP) Engineering School in 2008.

Cyrano and the other two pilots, Captain Foong Chee Kong and First Officer Ng Kheng Leng, were made to stay in Taiwan as investigations got underway after the crash. They were kept away from the Taiwanese media throughout that period as anger and bitter finger-pointing reached fever-pitch.

Said Cyrano, “We stayed in different locations and moved around, as the Taiwan media were trying to track us down and each day, the tabloids ran big stories of the accident. It came to a point where security personnel were assigned to us.”

The “scary” moment came after 52 days when the pilots were finally allowed to leave Taiwan and return to Singapore.

“We had to slip through Taiwan customs as if we were tourists. I remembered our bodyguards left us after entering the first door of the airport and the three of us went our separate ways to avoid being recognised by the local and international media,” he said.
Describing what happened next at the immigration counter, he said, “As our passports were burned from the accident, I gave a substitute travel document to the Taiwanese immigration officer who looked at it before holding up the letter and loudly proclaiming, ‘Is this your document?’.”

“The next thing I knew, a large group of people came charging forward from behind the pillars, cameras appeared out of nowhere and I thought to myself, ‘How could these guys manage to get into this restricted area?’” said Cyrano, who revealed his sense of helplessness after realising the Taiwanese media were on a witchhunt to find someone to blame for the crash.

He added that the reporters and photographers started surging forward, following him all the way to the boarding area, before he boarded his flight back to Singapore.
Worse was to follow when he returned to Taipei two years later after investigations into the crash concluded.

After being briefed by airport officials on the plane before arriving in Taiwan, he said, “The area was cordoned off for us to leave the plane but you could see the media lunging forward. It came to a point where the media came rushing towards us and I remember our bodyguards signaling us to follow them while the rest came to shield us as we fought our way to the vehicle.”

Crash investigators inspecting the remains of SQ006. (AFP Photo)

The final investigation report issued by the Taiwan Aviation Safety Council (ASC) on 24 April 2002, blamed the flight crew for not taking off from the correct runway, despite having all the relevant charts. As a result, the report said the pilots were unaware the aircraft had entered the wrong runway, which then had an area under construction.

However, Singapore officials disputed ACS’ report and said that it failed to present a complete account of the incident, as it appeared to pin full responsibility on the SQ 006 flight crew and played down equally valid contributing factors.

According to reports, the team from Singapore that participated in the investigation felt that the lightings and signages at the airport did not measure up to international standards. It added that critical lights were missing or not working, and no barriers or markings were placed at the start of the closed runway, which would have alerted the flight crew that they were on the wrong runway.

Is he still troubled by what happened ten years ago?

“I don’t think I am, even though I do still think about it. It was an accident. My conscience is clear and I managed to turn things around by positioning things differently,” he said.

“Moving ahead, I am keen to get back into the cockpit, pick things up after ten years and experience commercial flying again.”

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