Carrier Says There Are No Further Safety Concerns

China Airlines has completed the required inspections on its own and Mandarin Airlines 13 Boeing 737-800 aircraft, according to a Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) emergency airworthiness directive (EAD).

In order to ensure that all the planes are safe for flight operations, Taiwan's CAA sent inspectors to audit the inspection work, the carrier said Saturday.

The FAA issued the original EAD in August; a second, expanded AD was issued days later. The agency ordered airlines to inspect wing slats on certain newer Boeing 737 models within 24 days, and every 3,000 flying cycles thereafter. Taiwan's CAA, at the same time, issued the directive accordingly.

The directive was issued after a China Airlines 737-800 carrying 157 passengers caught fire after landing at Naha airport in Okinawa, Japan, while taxiing to the gate, as ANN reported. A bolt from the right wing slat punched a hole roughly one and a half inches in diameter, said Kazushige Daiki, chief investigator at Japan's Aircraft and Railway Accidents Investigation Commission, causing a fuel leak that lead to the explosion.

In accordance with the EAD issued by both CAA and FAA, CAL grounded every 737 aircraft for 18 hours in order to perform detailed inspections. The maintenance team used a bore scope to enter the slat track, the downstop assembly and the slat track housing, in order to get detailed, up-close pictures on a computer screen to verify the parts are properly installed.

The carrier said it found 100 nuts in its own fleet of 737s and subsidiary Mandarin Airlines' 13 Boeing 737-800s that were below FAA standard torsion values, Bruce Chen, China Airline's deputy spokesperson told Bloomberg.

"We've solved this problem," Chen said. "There's no safety concern."

www.china-airlines.com, www.faa.gov, www.caa.gov.tw/en