Los Angeles Times
TAIPEI, Taiwan – A China Airlines jumbo jet carrying 225 people on a flight from Taipei to Hong Kong crashed into the Taiwan Strait on Saturday, Taiwanese aviation officials said. There were no reports of survivors as night fell over the crash site, about 170 miles southwest of this capital.
Airline executives told reporters that the plane disappeared from radar tracking screens about 3:30 p.m. local time, or about 20 minutes into the 1 1/2-hour flight from Taipei’s Chiang Kai-shek International Airport to Hong Kong. Most of the 206 passengers and the crew of 19 were Taiwanese. Many were families heading for vacations in mainland China.
Taiwanese Transportation Minister Lin Lin-san said there was no hint of trouble and no warning from the flight crew before the crash.
“The plane abruptly disappeared from the radar,” he told reporters.
Taiwanese television stations aired footage Saturday evening showing farmers several miles from the crash site picking up debris from the cabin, including bits of in-flight magazines and other small items carrying the China Airlines logo. The scenes immediately led to speculation that the aircraft might have exploded in midair, but officials cautioned against snap conclusions.
“Because it’s at sea, we can’t know what happened without concrete evidence,” said Taiwan’s premier, Yu Shyi-kun. “Basically, we have found some life vests floating at sea.”
The body of one person aboard the ill-fated plane was recovered, and those of several others were seen floating in the water near the crash site before darkness reduced visibility, airline officials said.
The crash was the latest blot on China Airlines’ abysmal safety record, one of the worst in civil aviation. The state-owned carrier suffered three major crashes over a six-year period during the 1990s in which 460 persons lost their lives. In an attempt to restore the airline’s reputation, much of the senior management was replaced two years ago.
The government brought in Christine Tsung, an executive with no significant aviation industry experience, to shape a new corporate culture.
The last China Airlines disaster was three years ago in Hong Kong, when three of 315 passengers aboard an MD-11 airliner were killed during a crash landing. Earlier, Air China Airbus A300 crashes in Taipei and Nagoya, Japan, claimed 457 lives.
Airline officials said the plane involved in Saturday’s crash was the oldest in its fleet of 29 jumbo jets and the only remaining 747-200 still operated by China Airlines.
“This is the last one,” said airline spokesman Paul Wang. He said that the aircraft, which was nearly 23 years old, had been scheduled to be sold to a Bangkok, Thailand-based company but that the sale had been held up because of financial difficulties of the part of the potential buyer.
Wang stressed that despite its age, the plane had consistently passed frequent airworthiness inspections.
After news of the crash was made public, China Airlines officials in both Taipei and Hong Kong called together distraught relatives.
Late Saturday, the airline flew about 90 relatives of the victims to the tiny island town of Penghu, about 20 miles east of the crash site off Taiwan’s western coast, where rescue and recovery efforts were based. About 50 others with ties to the victims were scheduled to make the trip Sunday.
In Hong Kong, China Airlines resident manager Fei Hung-Kwan formally apologized for the accident at an airport news conference.
“We feel deeply sorry for this accident,” Fei said.
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