China Airlines is the state airline of Taiwan. The latest of its woes occurred yesterday in Naha, Japan, where one of its Boeing 737-800s suddenly caught fire on the tarmac.
As passengers slid down inflated emergency ramps, the plane turned into a fireball. Luckily, all 165 people aboard escaped alive.
The passengers of China Airlines haven’t always been so lucky. By my count, a whopping 758 people have died in crashes or other incidents while on board China Airlines aircraft in two decades or so. Here’s a recap, based on the Airsafe website:
- Feb. 16, 1986: Thirteen people die when a China Airlines 737-200 crashed on Pescadores, an island near Taiwan.
- Oct. 26, 1989: Fifty-six passengers and crew died aboard a 737-200 that crashed into a mountain near Hualien, Taiwan.
- April 26, 1994: A China Airlines A300-600 crashed on approach to Nagoya, Japan. All 15 crew and 249 of the 264 passengers were killed.
- Feb. 16, 1998: A China Airlines A300-600 arriving in Taipei from Bali in poor visibility crashed into a residential area. All 15 crew and 182 passengers were killed. At least seven persons on the ground were also killed.
- Aug. 22, 1999: A China Airlines MD-11 flipped after a hard landing in Hong Kong, then caught on fire. Three of the 300 passengers died.
- May 25, 2002: A China Airlines 747-200 jumbo jet broke up at 30,000 feet as it flew from Hong Kong to Taipei. Weather conditions were normal. The plane sent out no distress signal. The 19 crew members and 206 passengers were all killed.
In Monday’s event in Naha, everybody was evacuated safely, including two toddlers.
Say anything you want about Air China, the national carrier on the mainland. The seats are small. The flights are full. The food is not great. But I’ll take Air China over China Airlines any day, given this safety record.
If China Airlines doesn't clean up its act soon, it will become the butt of morbid jokes. I remember that wags in Central America, site of some horrific crashes, used to jest that the name of the Honduran carrier, SAHSA, was an acronym for Stay at Home, Stay Alive. Then there was TACA, the Salvadoran carrier, also known as Take a Coffin Along. TACA later emerged from crisis and vastly improved its record. SAHSA went kaput.
I'm glad to hear China Air is working to improve things, thanks Michael.
Posted by: Travel Guy | December 22, 2007 at 12:51 AM
Asia Sentinel also has a good piece, though there are some minor errors. They note:
++++++++
What is it about China Airlines? It is Taiwan’s largest airline and flag carrier, owned by the China Aviation Development Foundation, which belongs to the government of the Republic of China. And it has a spectacular record of disaster over the last 37 years. Its “full loss equivalent” rating, or the sum of the proportion of passengers killed for each fatal event, at 6.23 is the highest of any other East Asian airline.
Its record for FLEs, as they are called by airsafe.com, a consumer awareness group, is worse than that for Garuda Indonesia, the whipping boy of airline analysts across the world. Such patrician carriers as Singapore Airlines International and Cathay Pacific have records below 1.0. Qantas has a record of zero. According to another measure, since 1970, China Air has averaged 4.16 fatal events per million flights against a worldwide average under 1.
+++++++++
And also:
++++++
Several factors contributed to the problems. Heavy maintenance for several years was contracted to a shadowy firm on the island of Tainan that had formerly belonged to the US Central Intelligence Agency. Also, the airline’s pilots were largely drawn from the ranks of the republic’s air force, and they tended to fly like air force pilots, taking chances they needn’t take.
China Air has been working hard to correct its faults, analysts say. The airline brought in expatriate pilots several years ago as captains to alleviate what had become known as an “ex air-force flying club.” The first few years, the analyst said, were trying. “I talked to one (expatriate) pilot who said ‘you have to remember at all times that the guy in the right-hand seat is trying to kill you.”
It also sent young pilots off to other countries, particularly Australia, “to learn the proper way of flying,” he says, although they were frustrated when they came back because seniority kept them in the co-pilot’s seat.
+++++++++
Michael
Posted by: Michael Turton | August 21, 2007 at 08:48 PM