Taiwan Plane Crashes; Hopes for Survivors Dim
May 25, 2002 11:36 AM ET
By Simon Kwong and Benjamin Kang LimPENGHU, Taiwan (Reuters) - A China Airlines Boeing 747-200 with 225 passengers and crew on board crashed into the sea shortly after takeoff Saturday en route from Taiwan to Hong Kong.
Search and rescue vessels picked up scores of bodies floating off the Taiwan-held Penghu islands, also known as the Pescadores, and spotted a cabin door, life vests and an oil slick.
Television networks said more than 100 bodies had been retrieved. The Penghu fire chief said he was "not optimistic" about finding any survivors.
Aviation authorities said the pilot had not issued any distress signals before the Taiwan plane disappeared from radar screens about 20 minutes after takeoff in clear weather, raising the possibility of a sudden catastrophe.
Speculation about a mid-air explosion was heightened by television footage of farmers in the western coastal county of Changhua, about 47 miles from the crash site, holding up bits of foam padding and scraps of inflight magazine pages bearing the airline's logo.
Other debris included business cards, baggage check-in stubs and a photograph.
As night fell, naval vessels with searchlights joined military aircraft and helicopters combing the sea for survivors. Ambulances stood by in Penghu's fishing port, which was cordoned off. Empty yellow body bags were stacked in piles.
Policemen and soldiers stood guard outside a small sports stadium where soldiers wearing white masks and gloves laid blankets on the ground ready to receive bodies. Nearby, members of a Buddhist charity group chanted prayers for the souls of victims.
The airline president said the absence of Mayday signals indicated it was unlikely mechanical problems were to blame.
"If it had been mechanical problems, the pilot would have had enough time to contact the air control tower," Wei Hsin-hsiung told reporters. "I can't speculate what caused the crash."
Cabinet spokesman Chuang Suo-han told Reuters: "We won't know if the plane exploded in mid-air until after we find the black box."
At least one witness talked about an explosion.
"I heard a big bang," a fisherman identified only by the name Lee told ETTV cable television. "I thought it was mainland fishermen dynamiting fish."
Dynamite is used off the coast of Taiwan by fishermen from the Chinese mainland to stun fish and make them easy to catch.
AIRLINE APOLOGISES
It was China Airlines' fourth fatal crash since 1994.
And it was the third major air disaster in Asia since April, when an Air China Boeing 767 traveling from Beijing to Pusan in South Korea crashed into a mountain, killing 128 of the 166 on board.
On May 7, a China Northern MD-82 jet crashed into the sea off Dalian in northeast China. All 112 on board that flight perished.
China Airlines said Flight CI 611 was carrying 206 passengers, including three infants, and 19 crew. The plane was almost 23 years old, one of the oldest in the fleet, and had logged almost 65,000 flight hours.
Airline Vice President James Chang said the plane had been sold to Orient Thai, a Thai charter carrier, and was scheduled to be delivered on June 20.
In Hong Kong, distressed relatives of passengers and other loved ones gathered in the airport to await news.
"We feel so deeply sorry for this incident," David Fei, the airline's general manager in Hong Kong, told a news conference. He bowed twice in a Chinese gesture of contrition, but defended the company's safety record.
"Safety is our top priority," said Fei, adding the plane had received a maintenance check every year.
Taiwan cabinet spokesman Chuang Suo-han said the cabinet had formed an emergency team to deal with the situation."
The plane took off at 3:08 p.m. (3:08 a.m. EDT). Flying time from Taiwan to Hong Kong is one and a half hours.
"The plane abruptly disappeared from the radar," transportation minister Lin Lin-san told reporters.
Airline officials said Fourteen passengers were from Hong Kong, Macau and China. There were two Singaporeans and one Swiss on board.
In the last major crash in Taiwan in October 2000, a Singapore Airlines plane crashed at Taipei airport killing 83 of 179 people on board.
China Airlines was taken over in 2000 by its first woman chief executive officer, who set out to fix its appalling image.
A China Airlines MD 11 flipped over on landing in Hong Kong in September 1999. All but three of the 315 passengers and crew survived. More than 200 were injured.
In February 1998, a China Airlines Airbus carrying holidaymakers back from Bali crashed and disintegrated at Taipei airport, killing 196 aboard and seven on the ground.
That disaster followed an April 1994 crash in Nagoya, Japan, when a China Airlines Airbus A300-600R stalled during landing. Only seven of the 271 passengers and crew survived.
One Taiwan man traveling through Hong Kong airport said he had switched airlines after hearing of the crash.
"Would you dare fly? You would not. I have already switched to Cathay Pacific," he said.
CHINA OFFERS HELP
Norman Lo, acting head of civil aviation in Hong Kong, said Hong Kong had dispatched a helicopter and plane to take part in search efforts but the aircraft turned back once they heard Taiwan rescuers had started finding wreckage.
China's top negotiator with Taiwan extended his deep condolences.
Wang Daohan, president of the Association for Relations across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS), said he sympathized with the families of victims of the crash which caused "enormous loss of life and property to Taiwan compatriots," Xinhua reported.
Nine of the passengers were from the mainland, Xinhua said.
An ARATS official told Reuters that China's maritime rescue center had offered to aid the search and rescue mission in waters some 95 miles off the coast of Fujian province.
"For now, they don't need assistance," said the official who gave her surname as Zhang.
"But they said if the Chinese side finds anything related to the crash, they want to be informed."
Taiwan and China have been at odds since Nationalist forces took refuge on the island at the end of the 1949 civil war. The mainland views Taiwan as a breakaway province and has vowed to attack the island if it declares statehood.
A relative of passengers aboard a China Airlines Boeing 747-200 jet that crashed into the sea
en route to Hong Kong from Taiwan waits outside of China Airlines headquarters in Taipei,
May 25, 2002. Some 206 passengers and 19 crew were aboard the China Airlines flight when
it disappeared from radar screens off the Taiwan-held island of Penghu, or the Pescadores. Photo by Kenny Wu/Reuters