Fuel vapor explosion in the center tank, maybe? It’s happened.
Or perhaps the Taiwan Navy was conducting a missile-firing exercise in the area. Or maybe it was hit by a meteor.
I have a depressing feeling that the lessons from the TWA crash off Long Island have been steadfastly ignored - even despite China Airlines’ horrible safety record recently.
Is this something recent?
Peace,
mangeorge
[url.=http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/east/05/26/taiwan.crash/index.html]Unfortunately, yes.
Gee, Elvis. How would there be a lesson from the TWA flight if the ROC Navy was conducting a missile test? :rolleyes:
This;
(bolding mine)
sounds pretty significant to me.
Peace,
mangeorge
China Airlines has a pretty poor safety record. BTW, this is Taiwan’s national carrier and has nothing to do with the airlines in Mainland China. The Mainland airlines also have a poor reputation, and actually would be curious to see how that rank versus Taiwan’s China Airlines.
Apparently my OP disappeared.
Yup, I was talking about this story.
I think most or all of China Airlines’s safety problems in the 1990s had to do with human error, and were particularly prevalent during the landing phase. (IIRC, both the Nagoya and Taipei crashes involved “go-arounds”.) But aside from TWA 800–which was a 747-100–I’ve never heard of a plane breaking into pieces at cruising altitude w/out foul play involved. I’m not suggesting that fould play was involved, but I’m wondering how rare an event like this is when attributable to human error (impossible?) or to mechanical failure.
Metal fatigue could very easily explain it. There was a Hawaiian Airlines (?) flight back in the 80s nearly did the same thing. The only casualty in that instance was a flight attendant who got sucked out when the top of the plane came off at something like 30,000 feet.
USA Today ran a piece about a year or so ago on an engineer (he wasn’t an aerospace or aeronautical engineer, he was a boiler engineer [i.e. the guy that designs boilers for power plants, etc.]), who’d come up with a theory that the reason the plane lost its top had to do with the design of the aircraft structure more than metal fatigue. According to him, planes are built the way steam boilers used to be built, and the joints in old boilers are very susceptible to rupture. So much so that boilers made with that design have pretty much been replaced by newer designs, and no one will even consider building a boiler using the old methods any more.
According to this article, the five most dangerous airlines based on number of fatal accidents per million flights are:
And since I have a frequent flyer card from China Air, I guess I’m lucky to be writing this.
Feb 27, 1980: 707-300 crashes in Manila after crew executes a steep and unstable approach
Oct. 26, 1989: 737-200 crashes near Hualien after the crew uses an incorrect departure procedure
Apr. 26, 1994: A300-600 crashes in Nagoya, Japan, after pilot error causes the aircraft to stall during its approach.
Feb. 16, 1998: A300-600 crashes into a residential area near CKS airport during its second landing attempt.
Quote of the day from a China Airlines spokesman:
“We are hoping it will not become the second worst crash in our history.”
Theories of why the plane crash range from a missile from China, to an overheated fuel tank. The latter seems the most likely because of the similarities to the TWA 800 explosion.
The paper later interviewed a Taiwanese pilot who said:
It should be interesting to see if China Air can weasel their way out of this one.
Chris
Is there a recommended lifetime for a 747-200 either in years or more likely a maximum number of take off/landings?
The key thing for a high-altitude jet passenger plane is the number of “cycles”, that it, the number of times the hull is pressurized and de-pressurized.
So, 10 short hops of 1,000 miles would result in far more wear and tear and “aging” of the aircraft than 1 trip of 10,000 miles.
The first commercial jet, the British Comet, developed a nasty habit of literally blowing apart in mid-air after something like 10,000 flight hours - the pressurization cycle stretched the hull, resulting in metal fatigue and catastrophic failure (this month’s Smithsonian has an article on it, in fact). The incident over Hawaii certainly demonstrated that, while advances have been made and this rarely happens anymore, it certainly is still a possibility. All such jets in the United States are inspected frequently for signs of metal fatigue and other problems with the pressure vessel that holds the passengers. Some other countries are very conscientious about their airplane maintenance as well. Some are not. And sometimes something is missed because humans are falible.
In theory an agressively maintained airplane should last a long time. Just yesterday, in fact, a group of us at the local airport were admiring a 70 year old vintage plane that is still flying. The military is still using 50 year old bombers in combat. The key, of course, is honesty in maintainence and a willingness to do a major rebuilding of the airplane if that is what is required to keep things safe. This is expensive. It is human nature to try to cut corners.
Now, it may be that the China Jet was suffering metal fatigue. Or it may have been an exploding fuel tank. Or it may have been something else. At this point any explanation is really speculation.
"The only casualty in that instance was a flight attendant who got sucked out when the top of the plane came off at something like 30,000 feet. "
:o
Here’s more than you’ll ever want to know about 747’s breaking apart.
Gotta love the Internet.
Just aas clarification, The PRC is catagorically denying a missile as a possible cause, and Taiwan is calling the denial “credible”.