Cathay Pacific Flight 700Z

Cathay Pacific Flight 700Z
VR-HFZ, the aircraft involved in the bombing, in February 1972
Bombing
Date15 June 1972
SummaryBombing
Site
Aircraft
Aircraft typeConvair CV-880-22M-21
OperatorCathay Pacific
IATA flight No.CX700Z
ICAO flight No.CPA700Z
Call signCATHAY 700 ZULU
RegistrationVR-HFZ
Flight originSingapore International Airport, Singapore
StopoverBangkok International Airport (now Don Mueang International Airport), Bangkok, Thailand
DestinationHong Kong International Airport (a.k.a. Kai Tak Airport), Hong Kong
Passengers71
Crew10
Fatalities81
Survivors0

Cathay Pacific Flight 700Z was a flight from Singapore to Hong Kong operated by Cathay Pacific using a Convair CV-880 aircraft that crashed 30 miles (48 km) southeast of Pleiku,[1] then in South Vietnam, on the afternoon of 15 June 1972, killing all 81 passengers and crew on board.

It remains the deadliest aviation incident involving a Convair CV-880. An investigation was carried out by officials from Great Britain, Cathay Pacific's parent company the Swire Group and the Royal Hong Kong Police Force but efforts to retrieve wreckage and study the crash site were hampered by ongoing fighting in the region due to the Vietnam War.

An inquiry later determined the crash to have been caused by an explosive device, likely located within the passenger cabin. A Thai national was arrested as a suspect in the bombing but later acquitted at trial. Journalist John McBeth, who had worked for the Bangkok Post, described said trial as "Thailand's version of the O.J. Simpson trial."[2]

Aircraft and crew

Flight 700Z was flown using a Convair CV-880 which had been manufactured in 1961 and bore the registration VR-HFZ. The Captain of the flight was 43-year-old Australian national Henry Neil Morison (who had a total of 14,343 flight hours, including 5,261 hours logged on the CV-880), 38-year-old First Officer Lachlan Mackenzie (7,649 flight hours, with 2,867 hours on the CV-880), 42-year-old second First Officer Leslie Boyer (5,783 flight hours, with 1,529 hours on the CV-880), and 36-year-old Flight Engineer James Kenneth "Ken" Hickey (4,246 flight hours, with 2,595 on the CV-880). There were six cabin crew from Hong Kong led by two pursers, William Yuen and Dicky Kong.[3][4]

Morison and Hickey were Australian,[5] whilst Mackenzie and Boyer were British.[6]

Passengers

36 of the passengers boarded in Bangkok. The remainder of the passengers on the sector that was bombed had boarded in Singapore.[7]

The nationalities with the largest numbers of passengers were Japan, Thailand, and the United States.[4]

A June 1972 article in The Age stated that there were 17 passengers from Japan, 16 from the United States, 10 from Thailand, six from Hong Kong, three from Singapore, two each from Taiwan and the United Kingdom, and one each from Bangladesh, France, and Ireland.[8]

The Japanese passengers included 12 members of a tour group from Gunma Prefecture.[9]

According to a June 1972 report from the Associated Press, 11 Americans boarded the flight in Singapore and were bound for Hong Kong. Additionally, the report stated, six Americans boarded in Bangkok. Therefore, that count stated there were a total of 17 Americans on the sector when the flight was bombed.[10] The CEO and chairperson of the board of B.C. Ziegler, his wife, four of their children, and a family friend, all from West Bend, Wisconsin, United States, were among the deceased who boarded in Singapore.[11] Among those who boarded in Bangkok were a member of the board of trustees of Indiana University and his wife.[10][12]

There were seven members of one Filipino family on board.[4]

Two passengers from the United Kingdom and one from Ireland who were bound for Hong Kong boarded in Singapore.[13] The Irish passenger, a priest, trained Cathay Pacific flight attendants in their speech.[14] Whilst there were Australian crew members, no Australian passengers were recorded.[5]

Incident

Initial disappearance

Flight 700Z originated from Singapore with a scheduled stopover at Bangkok's Don Mueang International Airport, with the final destination being Hong Kong's Kai Tak Airport. The first leg of the flight proceeded without incident before the aircraft took off from Bangkok at midday with 71 passengers and ten crew members on board. The crew made regular radio contact for the initial leg of the flight.[3][4]

At 05:42 GMT (12:42 local time), the flight made contact with Saigon ATC. At 05:44, the crew made a routine transmission updating the progress of their route, adding that they would expect to reach their next waypoint by 06:06 GMT. This was the last transmission received from the flight. After Saigon lost contact with the aircraft, they made an appeal for information to both Hong Kong and Taipei ATC which produced negative results. Saigon then initiated an investigation as to the aircraft's whereabouts. Initial reports speculated that the flight may have collided with an American military plane with Reuters and Agence France-Presse claiming Flight 700Z to have been involved in a mid-air collision. However, no reports emerged of any other aircraft missing in the area.

The wreckage was near the town of Cheo Reo. The crash location was about 30 miles (48 km) southeast of Pleiku,[1] and about 200 miles (320 km) north of Saigon.[15] It was located in what was Phú Bổn province.[16]

Staff from the embassies of Japan, the Philippines, Taiwan, and the United States went to the wreckage location to help the identification process for the deceased.[17]

Investigation

The wreckage was located by a United States Army helicopter in "lightly wooded" terrain on a remote hilltop near Pleiku, still burning, not long after Saigon ATC lost contact.[18] Although two bodies were retrieved almost immediately, the presence of hostile Vietcong forces nearby made it very difficult to examine the wreckage in depth. South Vietnamese soldiers were drafted in to search for the wreckage and secure the crash site. It was reported that before the area was secured, local villagers had gone through the wreckage looking for valuables. A team of investigators from Cathay Pacific's parent company the Swire Group and the UK Civil Aviation Authority were sent to examine the area. The South Vietnamese Civil Aviation Department, the Thai government, and Cathay Pacific Airways each had their own investigations.[19] Two British men, Vernon Clancy and Eric Newton, went to the location to get information about the crash.[4]

The spread of debris suggested that the airplane had broken into three large sections, with the breakpoints almost exactly along the front and rear of the wingbox, prior to hitting the ground, and the relative closeness of these sections suggested that this breakup had occurred at a low altitude. Other debris, including two engines and the horizontal stabilizer, could be seen further away from helicopters, but could not be reached on foot due to war activity. The rear section of the aircraft was later found impaled on a tree with the bodies of thirteen passengers and two cabin crew members still inside while the middle section was found to have exploded on impact with the ground.[4] The aircraft's flight data recorder was recovered and read; it showed that the airplane was flying on course at 29,000 feet (8,800 m) at a speed of 310 knots (570 km/h) until 05:59 GMT (12:59 local time), at which point the recorded data became nonsensical for 30 seconds before stopping entirely. The aircraft was not equipped with a cockpit voice recorder.[3]

Upon examining the available debris, it soon became clear that the aircraft had suffered some sort of structural problem and loss of control at cruising altitude, and that the low-altitude breakup was caused by the overstressing of the airplane during an uncontrolled descent. Debris from the centre fuselage and right wing root showed signs of explosive "splash", and the number 3 fuel tank showed signs that it had ruptured prior to the low-altitude breakup inferred from the wreckage distribution. The vertical stabilizer showed signs that it had been struck by "at least one body and possibly some seats", and the horizontal stabilizer also showed signs of being damaged by debris in the air. Many bodies were not recovered, possibly because they had been ejected very early in this sequence. An investigator working at the crash site summarised that the plane suffered an explosive decompression around 1pm local time when lunch was being served and that the passengers standing in the aisle or queuing for the lavatory and cabin crew members overseeing the meal service were sucked out of the aircraft as it disintegrated.[4]

Without being able to better examine the wreckage, and lacking valid flight data from the final moments of the flight, it is not known what exactly happened after 05:59 GMT. Investigators concluded that apparently some sort of explosive device, likely located within the passenger cabin near the right wingbox, detonated at that time, causing unknown but catastrophic damage to the aircraft, including but not limited to the damage found on the horizontal and vertical stabilizer. The aircraft likely descended rapidly in an "erratic" manner. At an undetermined point in this descent, the horizontal stabilizer separated from the airplane entirely, and eventually the fuselage broke into the three sections initially found by searchers.[3]

Trial, acquittal, and aftermath

Following a UK Civil Aviation Authority and Hong Kong police investigation, as well as six years of reporting by a Bangkok Post journalist,[20] "a police officer whose fiancée and daughter were aboard was charged with the crime".[21] Somchai Chaiyasut, who had taken out three travel insurance policies on his fiancée and daughter, was declared not guilty due to lack of evidence.[22] He sued the insurance companies and received 5.5 million baht (US$ 180,000). He died of cancer in 1985. It was reported that "airline staff and relatives [had considered] hiring a hitman to kill him".[20] McBeth stated, "He had shown virtually no remorse."[2]

Initially Narong Kittikachorn, one of the three rulers of Thailand at the time, stated that the Thai government would successfully prosecute the suspect. The attitude changed among Thai officials, according to journalist Andrew MacGregor Marshall. He stated the ruling authorities in Thailand feared humiliation over a person being convicted of planting a bomb at the airport and decided to nullify a possibility of conviction to keep their country's reputation.[4] A Thai military official, Praphas Charusathien, another ruler and the father-in-law of Narong,[note 1] had argued that, in McBeth's words, "a loving Thai father would never kill his daughter for money."[2] Praphas accused Cathay Pacific of falsely stating that a bomb was planted on the plane to attract passengers to Kai Tak by sullying the reputation of the airport in Bangkok.[4]

The first acquittal happened on Thursday 30 May 1974.[24] McBeth, who had attended the 700Z trial, stated that people attending the verdict reading had shouted and cheered, and were standing on furniture.[2] Another trial ended on 2 April 1975, and he was acquitted again.[25] The second acquittal was announced in June 1975.[26] Somchai collected some of the funds from an American company, and in 1978 the Supreme Court of Thailand ruled that Somchai could collect from a New Zealand company.[27]

Luke Hunt of The Diplomat argued that the trial verdicts were an example of face saving seen in Thai society.[28] McBeth stated that there "appeared to be his overwhelming guilt" and that the case was "Thailand's version of the O.J. Simpson trial."[2]

McBeth described Praphas' statement about "a loving Thai father" as "emotionally nationalistic", and in regards to the acquittal, McBeth stated, "No one seemed to understand or care what a travesty of justice it was."[2] John Torinus, editor of the West Bend Daily News in the 1970s, stated, "Justice was not served."[29]

In regards to Somchai's death, McBeth said, "I have often thought it was the hand of God."[2]

Due to the fact seven people from West Bend were on board, Torinus called it "West Bend's greatest tragedy".[29] A West Bend resident, Andy Koehn, a nephew of the West Bend CEO, made a podcast, called "A Hazy Yellow Feeling," about the West Bend family and the crash that killed members of it.[29]

In regards to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, McBeth stated "In some ways, there is an eerie similarity between the Cathay Pacific case and the MAS incident."[2]

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Plane Breaks Up in Air Over So. Vietnam Today". Great Bend Daily Tribune. Vol. 96, no. 265. Great Bend, Kansas. 15 June 1972. p. 1. Retrieved 27 August 2026 – via Newspapers.com.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 McBeth, John (13 March 2014). "Technology may hold key to answers about MH370". The Korea Herald. Retrieved 27 August 2026 – via Asia News Network.
  3. 1 2 3 4 "Cathay Pacific Airways, Convair 880-22M, VR-HFZ, accident, near Pleiku,. South Viet-Nam, on 15 June 1972. Report dated 22 September 1972, released by Director of Civil Aviation, Republic of Vietnam" (PDF). ICAO. Retrieved 25 August 2024.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Marshall, Andrew MacGregor (7 May 2020). "How to get away with murder in Thailand". Southeast Asia Globe. Phnom Penh: Globe Media Asia. Retrieved 25 August 2024.
  5. 1 2 "100 feared dead in two airliners". The Sydney Morning Herald. No. 41965. Sydney. 16 June 1972. p. 1. Retrieved 27 August 2026 – via Newspapers.com.
  6. ↑ "Jungle troops ring airliner wreck". Hull Daily Mail. Hull, England. 16 June 1972. p. 11. Retrieved 27 August 2026 – via Newspapers.com.
  7. ↑ "Daughter Among 81 Killed: Thai Lawman Held As Plane Bomber". Intelligencer Journal. Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Associated Press. 1 September 1972. p. 3 – via Newspapers.com.
  8. ↑ "82 down in second air tragedy". The Age. Melbourne. 16 June 1972. pp. 1, 4 – via Newspapers.com.
  9. ↑ "キャセイ航空機が墜落／南ベ（プレーク）で空中分解？／81人乗り、全員絶望／観光団など日本人は17人". Ryukyu Shimpo (in Japanese). 16 June 1972. p. 1. 十二人は群馬の観光団 - Via: 滝本 匠 (15 June 2022). "復帰直後の沖縄〈50年前きょうの1面〉6月16日「知事、県議選終盤へ」―琉球新報アーカイブから―". Ryukyu Shimpo. Retrieved 30 August 2026.
  10. 1 2 "Cathay Pacific Jet Crash Kills 81 In South Vietnam". The Columbus Enquirer. Columbus, Georgia. Associated Press. 16 June 1972. p. 3. Retrieved 27 August 2026 – via Newspapers.com.
  11. ↑ "Air Crash Kills Six In Family". The Columbus Enquirer. Columbus, Georgia. Associated Press. 16 June 1972. p. 3. Retrieved 27 August 2026 – via Newspapers.com.
    Also see: "Wisconsin Family Identified". The New York Times. Associated Press. 16 June 1972. Retrieved 28 August 2026. The Kenny party, [...] was said to have boarded the plane at Singapore.
  12. ↑ "Indiana University trustee Hoosier on ill-fated plane". Chronicle-Tribune. Marion, Indiana. 16 June 1972. p. 12 – via Newspapers.com.
  13. ↑ "Troops guard jungle crash plane". Norwich Evening News. No. 27808. Norwich. 16 June 1972. p. 1. Retrieved 27 August 2026 – via Newspapers.com.
  14. ↑ "Father Patrick Cunningham, SJ". Jesuits of the Malaysia-Singapore Region. Retrieved 27 August 2026.
  15. ↑ "Jetliner explodes, 81 die". Casper Star-Tribune. Casper, Wyoming. 16 June 1972. p. 1. Retrieved 27 August 2026 – via Newspapers.com.
  16. ↑ "New mystery on Viet plane crash". The Age. Melbourne. Australian Associated Press. 17 June 1972. p. 7 – via Newspapers.com.
  17. ↑ "Find 19 in Cathay Crash". Pacific Stars and Stripes. Tokyo. United Press International. 18 June 1972. p. 3 – via NewspaperArchive. - Taiwan in this article is described as "Nationalist Chinese", meaning the Republic of China government based in Taipei.
  18. ↑ "Jack Heslin Crash of Cathay Pacific flight CX700Z 15 June 1972". Retrieved 25 August 2024.
  19. ↑ "Thai policeman held in Viet plane crash". The Oregonian. Portland, Oregon. Associated Press. 1 September 1972. p. 5 – via Newspapers.com.
  20. 1 2 McBeth, John (January 2011), Reporter. Forty Years Covering Asia, Singapore: Talisman Publishing, p. 34, ISBN 9789810873646
  21. ↑ "Criminal Occurrence description". Aviation Safety Network.
  22. ↑ Accident synopsis[link removed] at airdisaster.com
  23. ↑ Segaller, Denis (2005). "Names, Words, and Language". Thai Ways. Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books. pp. 212–213. ISBN 978-974-9575-73-4. - Copy at the Internet Archive that is ISBN 974-8206-49-1.
  24. ↑ "Police officer acquitted of charges in Kenny crash". The West Bend News. Vol. 120, no. 128. West Bend, Wisconsin. 31 May 1974. p. 1 – via Newspapers.com.
  25. ↑ "Jet Crash Insurance Paid". Richmond Times-Dispatch. Richmond, Virginia. 4 November 1978. p. A-4 – via Newspapers.com.
  26. ↑ "Acquittal Stays". Pacific Daily News. Agana, Guam. 16 June 1975. p. 20 – via Newspapers.com.
  27. ↑ "Suspect in Kenny crash collects". West Bend News. Vol. 124, no. 258. West Bend, Wisconsin. 4 November 1978. p. 1 – via Newspapers.com.
  28. ↑ Hunt, Luke (1 December 2012). "A Face Saving Side of Thailand". The Diplomat. Retrieved 27 August 2026.
  29. 1 2 3 Torinus, John (1 July 2026). "Revisiting West Bend's greatest tragedy". Washington County Daily News. West Bend, Wisconsin. Retrieved 27 August 2026. [...]Koehn, whose mother, Janet, was Tom's sister,[...] - Alternate copy on the personal website of Torinus.

Notes

  1. ↑ Thai people are politely referred to by their given names, not their family names.[23] See Thai name.

Further reading

13°59′N 108°00′E / 13.983°N 108.000°E / 13.983; 108.000

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