MasWings Aeroplane overshot or undershot Ba’Kelalan airstrip?

The Star reported that a MasWings Twin-Otter aircraft overshot the rural airstrip in Ba’Kelalan, about 350 km inland from Miri.

Fortunately 14 people on board survived when the plane ended up in a padi field.

Then the reporter (Stephen Then) wrote that State assemblyman for Ba’Kelalan Nelson Balang Rining, claiming that the aircraft shot off the airstrip, also said: “... The report I obtained indicated that the pilot approached the airstrip too low.”

I am glad that no one was killed but let me question the reporter or his editor on two statements made in that report:

(1) first, on “…overshot the rural airstrip in Ba’Kelalan, about 350 km inland from Miri.”

Miri is virtually on the coast of Sarawak, so why shouldn’t a rural strip 350 km from the coast by ‘inland’? Would it be possible to have that rural strip seawards?

(2) If Ba’Kelalan ADUN Nelson Balang Rining had claimed he heard the pilot approached the airstrip too low, then the accident should have been the aircraft UNDERshooting rather than overshooting the airstrip.

Overshooting would usually be a case of higher than normal speed in the approach or a high approach (rather than low approach) or both, a bad bad combination of high speed high approach.

In such a badly flown approach situation the pilot should have conducted what is known as a 'misapproach', that is, to abandon the approach landing, overshoot to a safe altitude and try the landing again.

Such a rotten approach was what a Garuda pilot had flown and persisted in a fatal landing at Jogjakarta despite his copilot pleading with him to overshoot. He destroyed the B737 and killed dozens of his passengers.

While the Star reporter had no doubt reported what he heard, he or his editor should have been more careful in cross-checking the plausibility of the feedback, or at least the correct use of aviation terms.