The flight took place on May 25, 2002 China Airlines 611which took off from Taipei and headed towards Hong Kong, exploded in flight, after being disappeared from the radardisintegrating off the coast of the Penghu Islands, in the Taiwan Strait. All 225 people on board died in the accident.
The accident and the recovery of the victims
May 25, 2002. A plane took off from Chiang Kai-Shek International Airport in Taipei. Boeing 747 of the Chinese airline, China Airlines, bound for Hong Kong. On board the cockpit were the commander, the first officer and a flight engineer.
The aircraft took off at 2.50pm local time without any problems, although in the 27 seconds before the accident it climbed very quickly, but within the limits set for that type of aircraft. About 20 minutes after takeoff, China Airlines Flight 611 vanished from radar, without sending any emergency signals. Where did the plane go?
As soon as the control tower noticed that Flight 611 had disappeared from radar, help was sent to find the Boeing and at 5.05pm a C-130 military plane spotted some oil slicks and the remains of an airliner in the sea, off the coast of the city of Makung. The Coast Guard, assisted by the Navy and some fishing vessels, confirmed that it was indeed China Airlines Flight 61 and recovered 175 of the 206 passengers, some at sea, others inside the sunken aircraft, sitting in their seats, still with their belt fastened.
During the investigations, the investigators noticed that 92% of the victims found in the water occupied seats between rows 42 and 57, in the rear part of the plane (Zone D and E), while the passengers recovered lifeless still inside the aircraft were seated in the front part of the plane, or between areas A and C. Another unusual fact that investigators had already noted was that the passengers who sat in the rear rows were without clothes, or with torn clotheswhile the others still had their clothes on. It was possible that theexplosion that disintegrated the aircraft occurred in the rear?
The investigations
From the radar data the investigators discovered that the plane had broken into 4 parts. But what caused the accident that cost the lives of 225 people? From the black box it emerged that not only did the plane climb very quickly, but that shortly before the disaster, one of the 4 engines began to give less thrust. In the final report the cause of the disaster was attributed tometal fatigue due to poor maintenance of the Boeing, carried out years earlier after a previous accident. The investigators wrote in their final report that the same aircraft had a “tailstrike” accident on February 7, 1980, while landing at Hong Kong airport. This particular type of accident occurs when the rear part of an aircraft touches the runway, during the landing or take-off phases.

After the 1980 accident the plane was depressurized and the following day suffered a temporary repair to the part of the fuselage, which was located in section 46, and was then definitively repaired in May of the same year. What the investigators accused the Chinese company was that the repair had been carried out without respecting the directives of the Boeing repair manual. In fact the damaged part of the fuselage was not replaced and the additional plate which should have covered the damaged area by at least 30%, barely covered the compromised area. The Boeing continued to fly for 22 years, when the continuous pressurization and depressurization weakened the fuselage to such an extent that on May 25, 2002 it broke away and caused the disaster that disintegrated the aircraft.
China Airlines disputed the report, arguing that there was no clear evidence that poor maintenance by the company’s technicians was the cause of the Flight 611 crash. But investigators found some photos taken 7 years before the Flight 611 disaster, in which one can clearly see some Nicotine stains right around the damaged plate. The nicotine stains came from cigarettes smoked by passengers when smoking was still allowed on board aircraft, and constituted evidence that cracks had formed in the plate, between which nicotine had infiltrated, due to the continuous pressurizations that occur when an airplane reaches cruising altitude. Unfortunately, no engineer or repairman at China Airlines noticed anything in 22 years.
The precedents
China Airlines Flight 611 is not the only accident due to a tailstrike: on 12 August 1985 a flight of the Japan Airlines crashed to the ground after losing the
tail, due to an incorrect repair to the rear pressure bulkhead. 520 people died on the Japanese plane, placing the tragedy in second place as the worst plane crash in history, after the Tenerife disaster.