China Airlines Flight 140

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

**China Airlines Flight 140**
Summary
Date	26 April 1994
Type	Crash on Approach/ Pilot error
Site	Nagoya, Japan
Passengers	256
Crew	15
Injuries	7
Fatalities	264
Survivors	7
Aircraft type	Airbus A300B4-622R
Operator	China Airlines
Tail number	B-1816
Flight origin	Chiang Kai-Shek International Airport
Destination	Nagoya Airport

China Airlines Flight 140 was a route from Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China to Nagoya, Japan. On April 26, 1994, the Airbus A300 on the route was due to land at Nagoya Airport. The Airbus A300 was completing a routine flight and approach, however just before landing, the First Officer pressed the Take Off/Go-Around button (also known as a TOGA) which raises the throttle position to the same as take offs and go-arounds.

Pilot Wang Lo-chi and copilot Chuang Meng-jung,^[1] attempted to correct the situation by manually reducing the throttles and pushing the yoke downwards. The autopilot then acted against these inputs (as it is programmed to do when the TOGA button is activated), causing the plane to have a very nose-high attitude. This nose-high attitude, combined with decreasing airspeed due to insufficient thrust, resulted in an aerodynamic stall of the aircraft. With insufficient altitude to recover from this condition, the subsequent crash killed 264 (15 crew and 249 passengers, including 2 infants) of the 271 (15 crew and 256 passengers, including 2 infants) people aboard. All passengers who survived the incident were seated at the starboard side of the aircraft in coach class.

The crash which destroyed the plane (delivered less than 3 years earlier in 1991) was attributed to crew error for their failure to correct the controls as well as the airspeed.

1 Passengers
2 Chronology of the flight
3 Court proceedings
4 Aftermath
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Passengers

Most of the passengers consisted of Taiwanese and Japanese; 153 Japanese and 101 non-Japanese were on the flight. Two infants were on the flight.^[2]

[edit] Chronology of the flight

The flight took off from Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport at 17:53 (Japanese Summer Time) bound for Nagoya Airport. The en-route flight was uneventful and the descent started at 19:47, and the airplane passed the outer marker at 20:12. Just 3 nm from the runway threshold at 1000 feet AGL, the airplane levelled off for about 15 seconds and continued descending until about 500 feet where there were two burst of thrust applied in quick succession and the airplane was nose up in a steep climb. Airspeed dropped quickly, the airplane stalled, the nose dropped. The captain tried to pull back on the control column but was unsuccessful and the airplane struck the ground at 20:15:45. 31-year old Noriyasu Shirai, a survivor, said that a flight attendant announced that the plane would crash after the aircraft stalled.^[3] Sylvanie Detonio, who had survived by April 27, said that passengers received no warning prior to the crash.^[2]

By April 27, 1994 officials said there were ten survivors (including a 3-year old) and that a Filipino, two Taiwanese, and seven Japanese survived.^[2]

By May 6 seven remained alive, including three children.^[3]

[edit] Court proceedings

Japanese prosecutors declined to pursue charges of professional negligence on the airline's senior management as it was "difficult to call into question the criminal responsibility of the four individuals because aptitude levels achieved through training at the carrier were similar to those at other airlines.". [1] The pilots could not be prosecuted since they died in the accident.

A class action suit was filed against China Airlines and Airbus Industrie for compensation. In December 2003, the Nagoya District Court ordered China Airlines to pay a combined 5 billion yen to 232 people, but cleared Airbus of liability. Some of the bereaved and survivors felt that the compensation was inadequate and a further class action suit was filed and ultimately settled in April, 2007 when the airline apologised for the accident and provided additional compensation.[2]

[edit] Aftermath

The Taiwanese authorities ordered supplementary training and a re-evaluation of proficiency to be given to all A300-600R pilots.
The software modification to the AFCS which allows the autopilot to be disengaged during any phase of flight was made mandatory.
The flight numbers CI140/141 have been retired after the accident and have been replaced with CI150/151.

[edit] References

Air Disaster, Vol. 3, by Macarthur Job, Aerospace Publications Pty. Ltd. (Australia), 1998 ISBN 1-875671-34-X, pp. 139-155.
Official report from the Japanese Aircraft Accidents Investigation Commission (In Japanese) (English translation)