Driver's seat of MAHB vehicle that collided with aircraft was reclined

PUTRAJAYA: The driver’s seat of the Malaysia Airport Holdings Bhd (MAHB) vehicle involved in an accident with an aircraft at the Subang airport last month was found to be in a reclining position.

However, it is too early to determine if the employee, Mohd Ruzaimi Iskandar Ahmad Razali who was killed in the incident, was asleep when the accident on the runway happened on March 18.

Transport Minister Anthony Loke, who shared the preliminary report on the incident, said investigators had not come to any conclusion.

“We can establish that the seat was reclined. We, however, cannot ascertain if the driver was asleep.

“It is too early to make a conclusion now, and it would be unfair to the driver,” he told a press conference on Friday (April 19).

Mohd Ruzaimi, who was in the vehicle used to supervise maintenance work on the runway at the Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah Airport, died a day after the accident.

The private jet, belonging to Berjaya Air, was on a chartered flight from Jaipur, India with eight passengers on board.

Loke said among the early findings from the investigating team was that the air crew were properly licensed and that the landing was done legitimately after getting clearance from the Subang air traffic control tower.

He said the air accident investigation bureau would investigate the use of a single controller per shift at the Subang airport, whereby the “break shift” saw only one air traffic controller on duty after midnight until 6.30am.

“A thorough investigation will be conducted on the standard operating procedure for communications between the control tower and maintenance vehicle using walkie-talkie instead of very high frequency radio communication,” he said.