Sunday, May 26, 2002
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Military search and rescue teams picked up scores of bodies off the Taiwan-held Penghu islands, also known as the Pescadores, and spotted a cabin door, life vests and an oil slick. Cable television networks said more than 100 bodies had been retrieved. Aviation authorities said the pilot had not issued any distress signals before the Taiwan plane disappeared from radar screens about 20 minutes after takeoff. The airline president said it was unlikely that mechanical problems were to blame. A top transport official, speaking soon after the crash, ruled out a mid-air explosion. ``We did not find an explosion in the air,'' the Vice-Transport Minister, Chang Chia-juch, told reporters. But cable network TVBS showed footage of farmers in the western coastal county of Changhua, about 75 km from the crash site, holding up scraps of foam padding and inflight magazines bearing the airline's logo. ``We think a mechanical problem was unlikely,'' the airline president, Wei Hsin-hsiung, told reporters. ``If it had been mechanical problems, the pilot would have enough time to contact the air control tower.'' ``I can't speculate what caused the crash,'' he added. At least one witness talked about an explosion. ``I heard a big bang,'' a fisherman identified only by the name Lee told ETTV cable television. ``I thought it was mainland fishermen dynamiting fish.'' Dynamite is used off the coast of Taiwan to stun fish and make them easy to catch as they float to the surface. As night fell, naval ships with searchlights joined military aircraft and helicopters in the hunt for survivors. The weather bureau reported cloud in the area but no rain at the time of the accident. It was China Airlines' fourth fatal crash since 1994. And it was the third major air disaster in Asia since April, when an Air China Boeing 767 travelling from Beijing to Pusan in South Korea crashed into a mountain, killing 128 of the 166 on board. On May 7, a China Northern MD-82 jet crashed into the sea off Dalian in northeast China. All 112 on board that flight perished. ``Because it's at sea, we can't determine (what happened) before finding anything concrete. But basically, we have found some life vests floating at sea,'' the Premier, Yu Shyi-kun, told reporters. China Airlines said Flight CI 611 was carrying 206 passengers, including three infants, and 19 crew. The plane was almost 23 years old, one of the oldest in the fleet, and had logged almost 65,000 flight hours. — Reuters
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