Reuters, "Landing speed key factor in Indonesia plane crash"

An Indonesian passenger jet that crashed this month killing 21 people was coming in to land at a higher than normal speed, the chief investigator said on Saturday. The Garuda Indonesia aircraft with 140 people on board overshot the runway in the central Java city of Yogyakarta and burst into flames on March 7. Five Australians were among those killed.

The chief crash investigator, Mardjono Siswosuwarno, said the aircraft's wing flaps failed to extend for landing and that might have been caused by the high speed. "This could be a contributing factor, but what is more important is that the plane's speed was higher than normal. Why? We don't know yet," Siswosuwarno, from the National Transport Safety Commission, told Reuters.

Survivors of the crash have described how the aircraft approached the runway at a "crazy" speed. Siswosuwarno said experts in the United States had fixed the cockpit voice recorder, known as the black box, after it was badly burned in the fire. Investigators can download the last 30 minutes of the crew's conversations, he said.