We found worrying details in Sabah CM’s plane crash investigation papers

On the evening of 7 June 1976, a Nomad airplane that was carrying Tun Fuad Stephens, then-Chief Minister of Sabah and 10 other passengers – including his eldest son and 5 top-ranking Sabah Ministers – was approaching the Kota Kinabalu airport. The entourage was on their way from Labuan to Kota Kinabalu on official business, and nothing seemed out of place.

Then, the unthinkable happened. As the plane was approaching the KK airport for landing, it crashed into the sea a mere 2 kilometers away, leaving no survivors.

From the get-go, there were rumors that the crash may not have been an accident for three reasons:

• Their landing was delayed in order to make way for a military plane to take off, even though logs show that no such plane was on the runway at the time
• Witnesses from a nearby village claim to have heard an explosion shortly before the plane crashed
• The plane was said to have spun before it crashed, something that government officials said was unusual and a sign the plane ‘could have been tampered with’.

But why were there rumors like these? Well, this is where it gets really interesting…

 

Tun Fuad wanted Sabah to get more money for its oil

In order for the Federal Government to get access to Sabah’s petroleum deposits, Tun Fuad wanted a 20% cut for the state – his flight to Kota Kinablau was to finalize the details of this agreement. After his death, his close friend Datuk Harris Salleh was appointed as his successor as Chief Minister. A week after the crash, Datuk Harris signed the agreement… with only 5% going back to Sabah. And how much difference does 15% make? According to Sabah State Reform Party (STAR) chief Jeffrey Kitingan, that 15% cost Sabah RM17.88 BILLION in 2012 alone.

It wasn’t just the oil; Tun Fuad had second thoughts about joining Malaysia. Apparently, Tun Fuad was initially opposed to the idea of Sabah being a part of Malaysia but was convinced to join by – of all people – Lee Kuan Yew (Singapore was still a part of Malaysia at the time). As the story goes, Lee Kuan Yew was sent by Tunku Abdul Rahman to persuade him to join, and Lee Kuan Yew told Tun Fuad that he would be the next Prime Minster after Tunku, and Tun Fuad would be the Deputy PM (and taking over the PM role after Lee Kuan Yew). So when Singapore left, Tun Fuad didn’t see a reason to be part of the Malaysian Federation and wanted to review Sabah’s participation.

For these reasons, and the fact that our government classified the investigation results from the crash gave rise to Illuminati-esque conspiracy theories… but that’s all changed as of yesterday – Anwar has just made the investigation report public. After giving it a read, here’s what we can tell you right off the bat: all the rumors in the intro turned out to be false… except the bit about the plane spinning before it crashed. There’s actually a kernel of truth to that.

Before we tell you how that happened, we gotta talk about the weirdest thing we found from the report…

 

The pilot had a super shady flight history and performance track record

Get this: the pilot’s original log book (a record of his flying hours) was claimed to have been burnt in June 1969, and his second log book was apparently stolen in November 1975. Penerbangan Sabah, the company that the pilot was registered with, did not verify the pilot’s flight hours from these two log books. The investigation team was only able to get an estimation of the pilot’s total flight hours (3,062 hours) based on the pilot’s new log book and the company’s flight authorization book.

This is fairly alarming to say the least, because without the log books, there’s no way to actually verify how experienced the pilot was.

The report also found that the pilot had a ‘history of poor performances in flying’, and there was evidence that the pilot wasn’t in the best condition to fly a plane at the time – he had already been on duty for 11 hours and 7 minutes, which exceeded the company’s maximum hours of 10 hours per shift. He was also complaining of feeling unwell before the flight… apparently, his dinner from the previous evening had upset his tummy a little.

Given the pilot’s condition, how was he allowed to fly the plane in the first place? Well…

 

The flight company didn’t follow their own SOPs properly

According to the report, Penerbangan Sabah seemed to be pretty laissez faire about their SOPs being followed. For one, they didn’t monitor their crew’s rest period, which led to the aforementioned pilot being assigned to Tun Fuad’s flight despite his fatigue and physical indisposition. Their paperwork appears to be all over the place as well; the company’s Technical Log (a document of maintenances done on a plane) was described as ‘such a poor document as to make it meaningless’.

And since the company was loose with their own SOPs, the investigators surmised that the pilots under their employ were, too… which led to the next thing that could have possibly caused the tragedy. The report says that the pilot’s casual attitude toward SOPs, combined with the presence of VIPs boarding the meant that he did not check that the load was distributed evenly throughout the aircraft. You see, you’re not supposed to load too much luggage into the back of a plane, because that causes its center of gravity to be unstable.

In the end, the report concluded that the pilot – who was very tired at this point – lost control of the plane as it spun into the sea near the KK airport due to its wonky center of gravity. Everything so far seems pretty straightforward, except…

Tun Fuad’s children want the Australian government to release their report

So, Tun Fuad’s three remaining children said that while they were grateful for the report, it didn’t quite answer all of their questions.

“Why was it given a security classification under the ISA? Why was it not released when the crash happened?” – Tuan Fuad’s children in a statement

They feel like they won’t get the entire picture of the incident without all the reports from Australia. Yeah, apparently, there are reports done on the incident by the Australian government, since they’re the ones who made the Nomad airplanes. Plus two of their reps from the Department of Transport were involved in the investigation. Previously, Datuk Yong Teck Lee, a former Chief Minister has made similar calls in the past, but the Australian National Archives declined, saying that certain parts of the report have been expunged, and:

“(The) records contain technical details… which could impact on the Commonwealth’s (Australia’s) relations with the current government of a foreign country” – The Australian National Archives, when asked about the report

Is there a deeper secret that the Australian government is hiding? Will we ever get to see the Australian reports? Who knows. Either way, we do hope Tun Fuad’s family will find the closure they need.