PETALING JAYA: In 1977, Elmina, Shah Alam saw a first plane crash on Sept 27 involving a Japan Air Lines Flight 715.
According to Wikipedia, the first plane crash on its way to the Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah Airport in Subang killed 34 people, including 26 passengers and eight crew members.
It was reported that the aircraft crashed into a hill during a thunderstorm at the Elmina Estate, when the area was still a rubber plantation in the 1970s.
The McDonnell Douglas DC-8 aircraft, with 69 passengers and 10 crew members on board, was due for a stopover at the Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah Airport in Subang before heading to Singapore.
There were also 29 Japanese passengers on board, while 45 survived the plane crash.
The plane had departed from Haneda Airport in Tokyo and flew to Changi International Airport in Singapore and stopped over at the Kai Tak Airport in Hong Kong.
Exactly a couple of hours into the flight, air traffic control at Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah Airport told flight 715 to start its approach and land on runway 15. The flight crew started their approach, putting the landing gear down and extending the flaps.
The aircraft descended below the minimum descent altitude of 750 feet and at 300 feet, unfortunately it crashed four miles from the airport and broke on impact, with no fire.
At the time, the crash was the second-deadliest aviation disaster to occur in Malaysia, until another ill-fated Malaysian Airline System Flight 653 crash, the same year, just two months later with 100 deaths.
In memory of the victims, a memorial was built in the Japanese cemetery in Malaysia.
