Paul Lewis/SINGAPORE
CRASH VICTIMS' relatives and survivors of the China Air Lines (CAL) Airbus Industrie A300-600 accident on 26 April, 1994, at Nagoya, Japan, say that they are to sue the carrier for pilot error.
The action coincides with publication of the first draft of the accident report. Under Japanese accident investigation procedure, the next step is a one-day public hearing, due on 7 February. All interested parties, which include the airline and the manufacturer, will present comments and representations. The final report is not expected until at least the end of the year.
CAL is offering victims a $150,000 out-of-court settlement. Relatives are asking for the equivalent of domestic Japanese road-accident compensation - $800,000. Taiwanese law sets air-accident liability to holders of Taiwan-issued tickets at $55,000 compensation, hence the decision to sue. Japan-issued ticket holders have a right only to $20,000, the amount specified by the Warsaw Convention.
Relatives of the victims are considering also suing Airbus on the basis of "willful misconduct". They allege an aircraft defect.
The relatives' lawyers say that the basis of their claim would be that Airbus, in the light of a previous incident involving autopilot mode-confusion, issued a service bulletin (SB) about a system modification, but did not give a deadline for its activation. Airbus says that SBs, unlike nationally mandated airworthiness directives, never have deadlines.
The claimants also allege that a protection device was available at the time of the accident, but the auto-pilot-system software modification from Sextant Avionique was not. Airbus insists that the only relevant correction was purely a software change. It says that the new software was available, which is proved by the fact that it was already incorporated in new aircraft at that time. It also denies a further claim that the co-pilot's training in Toulouse did not cover the situation, which precipitated the accident. Airbus says that it did.
If the SB had been carried out, the pilot/co-pilot would have been able to disconnect the autopilot, by applying 0.15kN (33lb) of stick pressure, but, in the event, the co-pilot failed to select autopilot disconnect and so his actions were counteracted by the autopilot.
The draft report confirms that, the crew became confused about what control-systems behaviour to expect, from their selected automatic-flight-system mode, during an instrument-landing-system approach.
Go-around mode was selected "for some unknown reason". It was noticed by the captain, but not deselected, says the report. Consequently, whenever the pilots engaged the autopilot or auto-thrust, the aircraft tended to climb.
The pilots kept manually overriding the autopilot, which compensated by motoring the trimmable horizontal stabilisers nose-up until the combination of go-around power and nose-up trim overcame the pilots' full nose-down elevator input. The aircraft pitched up, stalled and crashed.
Source: Flight International
