NICHOLAS IONIDES / SINGAPORE & BRENT HANNON / TAIPEI
Inquiry open-minded as to the cause of a crash that mirrors Pan Am 103 and TWA 800
Investigators are examining maintenance logs from the China Airlines (CAL) Boeing 747-200 that crashed into the Taiwan Strait on 25 May after the aircraft broke up at the top of the climb.
Radar data shows the 23-year-old aircraft broke into four groups of debris above 30,000ft (9,150m). The crew reported everything was normal in the minutes before the crash, with fine weather conditions. No distress call was received when the accident sequence started.
All 225 people on board were killed, but less than half of the bodies have been recovered. Those found show no signs of burns, says Taiwan.
Aviation Safety Council managing director Kay Yong says the last contact controllers had with the crew was at 15:16, 8min after take-off, when one of the pilots acknowledged clearance to climb to FL350. Military radar data shows the 747 dramatically changed heading, altitude and speed between 15:28 and 15:32 at around 31,000ft. Two sections of the aircraft almost exactly followed the south-westerly flight path, Yong says: the third piece turned left through about 30° and the fourth went in the opposite direction. Yong will not speculate on whether there was an explosion.
US experts assisting with the probe had investigated TWA 800, the 747-100 that crashed in the Atlantic near New York in 1996 after its centre wing fuel tank exploded. That explosion resulted from ignition of the fuel/air mixture in the tank.
More than 40 US Federal Aviation Administration airworthiness directives (ADs) relating to fuel tank safety have been issued since then. Asked whether the ADs had been implemented, Yong emphasised: "Certainly that is a very, very key area that we need to look into."
The CAL 747 (B-18255) was operating flight, CI611, from Taipei to Hong Kong. It had accumulated 21,180 landings and 64,394h.
Government officials say that neither the Taiwanese or Chinese armed forces were conducting firing in the area on that day, and the aircraft had not infringed mainland China's airspace.
Debris has been retrieved as far as 75km away from where the bulk of the wreckage has been found, just north of the Penghu group of islands, around 50km (30nm) off the west coast of Taiwan. This mirrors the effect of the Pan American flight 103 mid-air explosion at Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988, which was caused by a saboteur's bomb and happened in high cruise.
On 30 May authorities said they had located signals from the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder 67m down in the sea.
The aircraft was the last passenger 747-200 variant in CAL's fleet and was to have been retired in June. The airline has been ordered to ground its four 747-200 freighters until inspections are carried out.
Source: Flight International
