China Airlines Flight 611 (callsign Dynasty 611) was a regularly scheduled passenger flight from Chiang Kai-shek International Airport (now Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport) in Taoyuan County (now Taoyuan City), Taiwan to Hong Kong International Airport in Hong Kong. On 25 May 2002, the Boeing 747-209B operating the route disintegrated in mid-air and crashed into the Taiwan Strait 20 minutes after takeoff, killing all 225 people on board. The in-flight break-up was caused by improper repairs to the aircraft 22 years earlier. As of 2014, it remains the most recent accident involving a Boeing 747 to result in passenger fatalities and deadliest accident in Taiwanese history.
The accident was particularly disturbing to the public as the Taipei-Hong Kong route was and is one of the most heavily-traveled air routes on earth; it is so profitable that it is even referred to as the "Golden Route".
The aircraft involved was the last passenger Boeing 747-200 in service with China Airlines. There were only three passenger 747-200s delivered to China Airlines, all from 1979-1980, and the other two had been in full passenger service until 1999 when they were converted to freighters.
§Flight and disaster
The flight took off at 15:08 local time (07:08 UTC) and was scheduled to arrive at Hong Kong at 16:28 HKT (08:28 UTC). The flight crew consisted of 51-year-old Captain Ching-Fong Yi (Chinese: ???; pinyin: Yì Q?ngf?ng), 52-year-old First Officer Yea Shyong Shieh (???; Xiè Yàxióng), and 54-year-old Flight Engineer Sen Kuo Chao (???; Zhào Shèngguó). The names of the pilot and first officer, respectively, are alternatively romanized as "Yi Ching-Fung" and "Hsieh Ya-Shiung". All three pilots were highly experienced airmen - the captain and first officer each had more than 10,100 hours of flying time and the flight engineer had clocked more than 19,100 flight hours.
At 15:16, the flight was cleared to climb to flight level 350 (approximately 35,000 feet). At 15:33, contact with the plane was lost.
Chang Chia-juch, the Taiwanese Vice Minister of Transportation and Communications, said that two Cathay Pacific aircraft in the area received B-18255's emergency location-indicator signals. All 19 crew members and all 206 passengers on board the aircraft died.
§Passengers
The passengers included a former legislator and two reporters from the United Daily News. The majority of the passengers, 114 people, were members of a Taiwanese group tour to the mainland organized by four travel agencies. Almost all of the passengers were ethnic Chinese. The sole non-ethnic Chinese person was a Swiss man.
§Nationalities of the passengers
§Recovery and identification of remains
The government of the Republic of China kept statistics of the passengers who were recovered.
The remains of 175 of the 206 passengers aboard were recovered and identified. The first 82 bodies, those of 76 passengers and six cabin crew, were found floating on the surface of the ocean, and were recovered by fishing vessels, the Coast Guard, and military vessels.
Autopsies were conducted on three flight crew members, while 10 bodies and some human remains were X-rayed.
Most of the recovered passengers in the rear of the jet (Zones D through E) were found naked, since their clothes were torn off due to the forces of explosive decompression. Most of the recovered passengers in the front of the jet (Zones A through C) still had clothes on. Of the recovered passengers, 66 were fully clad, 25 were partially clad and 50 were completely naked.
Some passengers were found floating, while some remained strapped in their seats. Of the recovered passengers, 54 did not float and were not seated, seven did not float and were still seated, 81 floated and did not decompose while 25 floated and decomposed. 92 percent of the passengers initially found floating on the ocean surface had assigned seats located in and between Rows 42 and 57 (Zone E).
Some passengers had injuries predominantly on one side per body. Of these passengers, 10 sustained injuries predominantly on their left side while 10 sustained injuries predominantly on their right side. Fifty-one sustained tibia and/or fibula bone fractures. Some passengers sustained back and/or hand abrasions. Of these, 27 sustained only hand abrasions, 10 sustained only back abrasions and 16 sustained back and hand abrasions.
§Search, recovery and investigation
At 17:05, a military C-130 aircraft spotted a crashed airliner 20 nautical miles (37 km) northeast of Makung. Oil slicks were also spotted at 17:05; the first body was found at 18:10.
Searchers recovered 15 percent of the wreckage, including part of the cockpit, and found no signs of burns, explosives or gunshots.
There was no distress signal or communication sent out prior to the crash. Radar data suggests that the aircraft broke into four pieces while at FL350. This theory is supported by the fact that articles that would have been found inside the aircraft were found up to 80 miles (130 km) from the crash site in villages in central Taiwan. The items included magazines, documents, luggage, photographs, Taiwan dollars, and a China Airlines-embossed, blood-stained pillow case.
The flight data recorder from Flight 611 shows that the plane began gaining altitude at a significantly faster rate in the 27 seconds before the plane broke apart, although the extra gain in altitude was well within the plane's design limits. The plane was supposed to be leveling off then as it approached its cruising altitude of 35,000 feet. Shortly before the breakup, one of the aircraft's four engines began providing slightly less thrust. Coincidentally, the engine was the only one recovered from the sea floor. Pieces of the aircraft were found in the ocean and on Taiwan, including in the city of Changhua.
The governments of Taiwan and the People's Republic of China co-operated in the recovery of the aircraft; the Chinese allowed personnel from Taiwan to search for bodies and aircraft fragments in those parts of the Taiwan Strait controlled by the People's Republic of China.
China Airlines requested relatives to submit blood samples for DNA testing at the Criminal Investigation Bureau of National Police Administration (now National Police Agency) and two other locations.
The United Daily News stated that some relatives of passengers described the existence of this flight to Hong Kong as being "unnecessary". Most of the passengers intended to arrive in Mainland China, but because of a lack of direct air links between Taiwan and Mainland China, the travellers had to fly via Hong Kong; the relatives advocated the opening of direct air links between Taiwan and Mainland China.
§Metal fatigue
The final investigation report found that the accident was the result of metal fatigue caused by inadequate maintenance after a previous incident.
The report indicated that on 7 February 1980, the aircraft used on Flight 611 from Stockholm Arlanda Airport to Taoyuan International Airport via King Abdulaziz International Airport, and Kai Tak International Airport had a tailstrike accident while landing in Hong Kong. Part of the plane's tail scraped along the runway for several hundred feet. The aircraft was depressurized, ferried back to Taiwan on the same day, and a temporary repair done the day after. A more permanent repair was conducted by a team from China Airlines from 23 May through 26 May 1980. However, the permanent repair of the tail strike was not carried out in accordance with the Boeing Structural Repair Manual (SRM). The area of damaged skin in Section 46 was not removed (trimmed) and the repair doubler plate that was supposed to cover in excess of 30 percent of the damaged area did not extend beyond the entire damaged area enough to restore the overall structural strength.
Consequently, after repeated cycles of depressurization and pressurization during flight, the weakened hull gradually started to crack and finally broke open in mid-flight on 25 May 2002, exactly 22 years to the day after the faulty repair was made upon the damaged tail. An explosive decompression of the aircraft occurred once the crack opened up, causing the complete disintegration of the aircraft in mid-air. This was not the first time that a plane had crashed because of a faulty repair following a tailstrike. On 12 August 1985, 17 years before the Flight 611 crash and five years after the accident aircraft's repair, Japan Airlines Flight 123 had crashed when the vertical stabilizer was torn off and the hydraulic systems severed by explosive decompression, killing 520 of the 524 people on board. That crash had been attributed to a faulty repair to the rear pressure bulkhead, which had been damaged in 1978 in a tailstrike incident. In both crashes, the faulty repair had been an incorrectly installed doubler plate that was not installed according to Boeing standards.
China Airlines disputed much of the report, stating that investigators did not find the pieces of the aircraft that would prove the contents of the investigation report.
One piece of evidence of the metal fatigue is contained in pictures that were taken during a routine inspection of the plane years before the crash. The photos showed visible brown nicotine stains around the doubler plate. This nicotine was deposited by smoke from the cigarettes of passengers who were smoking through 1995, when the airline banned inflight smoking. The doubler plate had a brown nicotine stain all the way around it that could have been detected visually by any of the engineers when they inspected the plane. The stain would have suggested that there might be a crack caused by metal fatigue behind the doubler plate, as the nicotine slowly seeped out due to pressure that built up when the plane reached its cruising altitude. The stains were apparently not noticed and no correction was made to the doubler plate. Had an engineer taken notice of the stains, it is likely that the crash would never have happened.
§Aircraft history
The aircraft B-18255 (originally registered as B-1866) involved, MSN 21843, was the only Boeing 747-200 passenger aircraft left in the China Airlines fleet at the time. It was delivered to the airline in 1979 as B-1866 and reregistered as B-18255 in May 1999, and had logged 64,810 hours of flight time. The aircraft had a 274-seat configuration (22 first-class, 84 business-class, 131 main deck economy-class and 37 upper-deck economy seats). Prior to the crash China Airlines had sold B-18255 to Orient Thai Airlines for US$1.45 million. The accident flight was the aircraft's penultimate flight for China Airlines as it was scheduled to be delivered to Orient Thai Airlines after its return flight from Hong Kong to Taipei. The contract to sell the aircraft was voided after the crash.
The four remaining 747-200 freighters in China Airlines' fleet were grounded immediately by the ROC's Civil Aviation Administration (CAA) after the crash for maintenance checks.
§Flight number
Flight 611 no longer exists. Shortly after the accident, China Airlines changed the flight number to 619, which now serves the Taipei-Hong Kong route along with existing flights 903, 641, 605 (which was also involved in an accident), 909, 913, 915, 617, 679, 923, 927 and 2927.
§Maps
§See also
- Lists of accidents and incidents on commercial airliners
- Air safety
- List of Mayday episodes "Scratching the Surface"
§Similar events
- TWA Flight 800
- Aloha Airlines Flight 243
- Japan Airlines Flight 123
- 1964 Savage Mountain B-52 crash - Another accident that involved structural failure
§Footnotes
§References
- ASC-AOR-05-02-001, the official Aviation Safety Council documents.
- English language final report, Volume 1 (Archive)
- English language final report, Volume 2 (Archive)
- ASC-AOR-05-02-001, official ASC documents in Chinese
- Chinese language final report, Volume 1 (Archive) - Chinese is the original version and the language of reference
- Chinese language final report, Volume 2 (Archive)
§External links
§Official investigation reports
- Ballistic Trajectory Analysis for the CI611 Accident Investigation (Archive)
§China Airlines
- 0525 Flight CI 611 Status Updates
- China Airlines Statement on CI 611 Accident Investigation Report
§Media
- "Cracks blamed for 2002 China Airlines crash", CBC News, 25 February 2005
- Crashed China Airlines Plane Said to Break up in Sky, People's Daily
- "CAL 747 crashes with 225 aboard," Taipei Times
- "China Airlines back in the dock," BBC
- Between the Shores of Life and Death
- Set the Kite Free
- Taiwan says crashed China Air jet missed check-ups
§Other
- Cockpit Voice Recorder transcript and accident summary
- B-18255 Seat Plan
- China Airlines flight 611 disaster Tzu Chi mobilizes volunteers from all over Taiwan to help Tzu Chi
- Jiang Expresses Condolence Over Victims of China Airlines Crash (05/27/02)
- (Chinese (Taiwan)) Yang, Minghao (???), Li Baokang (???), Su Shuikao (???), and Guan Wenlin (???). "??CI-611????????????" (Archive). Aviation Safety Council. - Includes English abstract
Interesting Informations
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