Flight 6517 departed Bajawa's Turelelo Soa Airport at nine in the morning, bound for Kupang on the western tip of Timor, a short flight across the strait separating the two islands. The route traces the volcanic backbone of East Nusa Tenggara, one of Indonesia's most geographically fragmented provinces -- a chain of islands where aviation is not a convenience but a necessity. Captain Aditya Pri Joewono, a veteran with over 12,500 flight hours and nearly two decades at Merpati, sat in the right seat as pilot monitoring. In the left seat was Vunpin, a Malaysian national who had joined the airline just three months earlier. He had logged 58 hours as a first officer -- a fraction of his captain's experience. Vunpin was still in training, and the airline had planned his qualification check for an upcoming flight. He had asked for more time, wanting additional multi-day schedules to build confidence. The weather was clear. Visual conditions prevailed. The flight was uneventful until the final moments of approach.

On a turboprop aircraft, the power levers control propeller pitch. In normal flight, a mechanical lock system and an electromagnetic solenoid prevent the levers from moving past flight idle into the ground-idle or beta range -- positions that flatten the propeller blades and generate massive drag rather than thrust. These safeguards exist for a critical reason: entering beta mode in the air is essentially the same as throwing an aircraft into reverse while still airborne. But Flight 6517's power lever lock was found in the open position, meaning the electromagnetic safeguard was disengaged. With that lock open, only a small mechanical stop stood between flight idle and catastrophe. Vunpin lifted the stop and pulled the levers back. He meant to reduce power and correct his airspeed. Instead, at roughly 70 feet above the runway, both engines entered beta mode. The propeller pitch dropped to a low angle, and the aircraft lost thrust and lift simultaneously. Indonesia's National Transportation Safety Committee later conducted simulator tests confirming the inevitable: at 112 feet, there was no recovery possible. At 70 feet, the outcome was sealed.

The investigation revealed something more troubling than a single error. Vunpin had experienced delays in moving the power levers to ground idle during previous landings -- a stickiness in the transition that frustrated him. Rather than reporting the difficulty as a mechanical concern, he developed a workaround: lifting the mechanical stop early, during approach, to ensure a smooth transition after touchdown. It had worked before. On June 10, it did not. Investigators described the cognitive trap precisely. Vunpin's past experiences created a belief that preemptively bypassing the stop was the correct procedure. This belief became behavior. And his desire to prove himself ready for the upcoming qualification check -- to demonstrate he had overcome his recurring errors -- added pressure that narrowed his judgment. He was trying to be perfect at the wrong thing. The investigation also found that Merpati's own instructors had, back in 2008, revised the normal checklist to select the power lock to "open" before landing, after the first two MA60 aircraft experienced problems with the lock failing to release after touchdown. A systemic issue had been normalized into procedure.

All 50 people aboard survived. Twenty-five were injured, five seriously -- the captain and four passengers in rows three, seven, and eight absorbed the worst of the impact. Military personnel from the hospital adjacent to El Tari Airport assisted with evacuations. The airport closed for over a day while the broken fuselage was cut apart and removed from the runway, delaying or diverting at least seven flights. Indonesia's Transportation Ministry ordered a special audit of Merpati's entire MA60 fleet, grounding the airworthiness review of all eight aircraft. The airline estimated its losses from the crash at 100 billion rupiah. For Merpati Nusantara -- Indonesia's second-oldest airline, founded in 1962, whose name means "dove of the archipelago" -- the financial blow was devastating. Already struggling with mounting debts, the airline suspended all operations in February 2014, just eight months after Flight 6517. It never flew again. By 2022, the Indonesian government permanently revoked its operating license, closing the chapter on an airline that had once connected the most remote corners of the archipelago.

The cockpit voice recorder captured 120 minutes of clear audio. In the final seconds, investigators heard Vunpin adjusting power to correct his speed, followed by the unmistakable sound of engine and propeller behavior changing -- the acoustic signature of beta mode engagement. Then came the single word: "Oops." Then impact. The flight data recorder told the rest. The approach was steeper than the published profile for Runway 07, exceeding 2.9 degrees. The left power lever entered beta range at 112 feet, the right lever at 90 feet. At touchdown, the recorder captured a vertical acceleration of +5.99 G followed by -2.76 G, then stopped recording 0.297 seconds later. The aircraft had hit the ground with roughly six times the force of gravity -- far beyond the structural limits any commercial airframe is designed to withstand. That the fuselage held together enough to protect its passengers was a matter of engineering margins and luck, not of anything that went right in the cockpit.