Crash Plane Broke Up in Mid-air

The ageing China Airlines plane which crashed in the Taiwan Strait with the loss of all on board disintegrated in mid-air so suddenly that there was no time for a distress signal, investigators said yesterday.

Taiwan's military radar provided a clear picture of the Boeing 747-200 breaking into four pieces about 20 minutes after take-off from Taipei on Saturday afternoon.

"There was an inflight break-up above the altitude of 30,000 feet. We are very positive about this," said Kay Yong, head of Taiwan's aviation safety council.

There were immediate suspicions of an inflight explosion. The 22-year-old plane was the only one of its type still in passenger service with the Taiwanese airline, it emerged yesterday. It was on one of its last flights before being disposed of next month to a charter company in Thailand.

China Airlines, which is struggling to recover from a poor safety record with four fatal crashes in the last 10 years, was castigated in yesterday's Taiwanese press.

"How many innocent lives have to be wasted before we see a real improvement in Taiwan's aviation safety and the management of China Airlines?" asked the China Times. "In less than 10 years, China Airlines has caused nearly 700 deaths. We cannot tolerate this any more."

Flight 611 to Hong Kong was carrying 225 passengers and crew including 190 Taiwanese, 14 passengers from Hong Kong and Macao, nine Chinese citizens, one from Singapore and one from Switzerland.

The pilots had a normal conversation with the control tower at Taipei airport until a last routine message at 3.16pm. At 3.29pm the plane disappeared off the control tower's radar screen.

More than 70 bodies were recovered yesterday from the crash site near Penghu island about 30 miles from the main island of Taiwan.

Grieving relatives arrived at Penghu carrying portraits of the victims and articles of their clothing. They called out the names of their loved ones to "summon their spirits home".

A cabin door, a wheel and other parts were retrieved from a oil slick so long that it was described by a helicopter pilot as like "an airport runway on the water."

However, smaller items of debris were also found miles away in rice fields on Taiwan's west coast, confirming suspicions of an explosion.

The wreckage will be examined for signs of blast marks and other possible indications of the cause. Hong Kong expert Peter Lok suggested this might have been a mid-air fuel tank explosion - similar to one widely believed to have caused the crash of a TWA Boeing 747 in 1996 near New York.

There were conflicting reports on whether electronic signals picked up by searchers came from the plane's two "black boxes" or from its emergency locator transmitters.

Taiwan's government yesterday ordered China Airlines to ground four other ageing 747-200 which are used for cargo.

"(The crash) might have something to do with the plane's structure and mechanical problems," said deputy transport minister Chang Chia-chu.

The plane had logged almost 65,000 flight hours and had been sold to Orient Thai, a charter carrier. It was due to be delivered to the new owner in a month's time.

China Airlines rushed out half-page advertisements in many Taiwan newspapers expressing "our deepest apology to the relatives of the victims and to the public."

More than 200 people were killed in a 1998 disaster at Taipei's airport, and a similar number at Nagoya in 1994. Another China Airlines flipped over while landing at Hong Kong in 1999 with the loss of three lives.

In October 2000, a Singapore Airlines plane also crashed at Taipei airport after a mix-up over a closed runway, with the loss of 83 people.

The crash has heightened concern over air safety in the region, after recent fatal disasters involving two mainland Chinese planes.

The mainland's flagship carrier Air China suffered its first crash in nearly 50 years last month when a Boeing 767 crashed at Pusan in South Korea with the loss of 128 lives.

This month a China Northern MD-82 jet disappeared in the sea off Dalian, killing all 112 passengers and crew.

The mainland Chinese civil aviation administration has banned so-called "red-eye" flights which occur late at night, and intense publicity has accompanied the search for the two flight recorders in the Dalian disaster.