225 Died a Year Ago, on Approach to Taiwan's Penghu Island

China Airlines Flight CI611 made headlines a year ago, May, when it inexplicably disappeared from radar. 225 people were killed, including 19 crew; and recovery efforts were hampered by rough waters, for many days.

Now, some new facts are pointing to a possible cause of the disaster: investigators are pointing to an inadequate repair job performed on the then nearly-new plane in 1980. (The craft was built in 1979.)

What happened, had to do with a patch to the rear cargo door area of the fuselage. That area had been damaged by a tail strike on takeoff from Hong Kong's notoriously-difficult Kai-Tak airport.

Now, Taiwan Aviation Safety Council investigator Kay Yong has told reporters, "We have found… what we call multiple site fatigue cracks… with the length of nearly 70 inches," in the area of the patch, apparently caused by a poorly-engineered, or poorly-installed patch.

Decades of inspections, also, apparently failed to catch the now-nearly-six-foot cracks, surrounded by areas of corrosion, casting another cloud over the much-maligned Chinese maintenance workers at the state-owned airline.

The 747-200, one of a fleet of 30 that the airline owned at the time, was piloted by experienced crewmen; it was not long after the flight that pilot error was discounted as the cause of the disaster.

As we reported in May of 2002, the pilot was, "…Mr. Ching-Fong Yi with 6128 flight hours. The co-pilot was Mr. Yea Shyong Shieh with 6244 flight hours and flight engineer Mr. Sen Kuo Chao [had] 18024 flight hours."

It was not until recently, however, that evidence of just why the airplane fell out the sky was being made public.

FMI: www.china-airlines.com