China Airlines flight CI 611 with 225 people on board crashed into the sea near Penghu yesterday afternoon after taking off from Taipei en route to Hong Kong.
The search-and-rescue effort was still underway and no survivors had been discovered as of press time last night. More than 100 bodies have been spotted, according to a China Airlines spokesman.
PHOTO: CHANG CHIA-MING, TAIPEI TIMES
The cause of the crash is still under investigation.
The Boeing 747-200, which took off from CKS International Airport at 3:08pm, disappeared from radar screens at around 3:30pm, when it was about 19km from Makung city, officials said.
According to China Airlines' records, the plane was carrying 206 passengers, three of whom were infants, and 19 crew members.
All 19 crew members as well as 190 passengers on board were Taiwanese, including two United Daily News reporters and a former legislator.
In addition to 14 Hong Kong, Macau and Chinese residents, foreign passengers also included one Singaporean, identified as Sim Yong-joo, and one Swiss, identified as Luigi Heer.
The air force and coast guard sent ships and helicopters to search for the plane as soon as the accident was reported, with the first body found at about 6:14pm around the port of Chihkan, located north of Penghu Island.
The Executive Yuan established an emergency command center headed by Minister of Transportation and Communications Lin Lin-san (
Showing his concern about the accident, Premier Yu Shyi-kun went to the airport in the afternoon and then rushed to the Civil Aeronautics Administration office last night to take command of the search-and-rescue efforts in person.
"This is a matter for regret," Yu said.
Yu said President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) had ordered the military to mobilize all possible resources to search for survivors, as long as the nation's combat readiness was not impaired.
Vice Minister of Transportation and Communications Chang Chia-juch (
Chang added that the control tower had not received any distress calls before the plane went missing.
Data indicate that the crash took place between 3:37pm and 3:40pm, when two Cathay Pacific planes in the vicinity received emergency location-indicator signals from the downed China Airlines plane, Chang said.
The Executive Yuan's Aviation Safety Council created an investigative panel last night to look into the cause of the accident.
Kay Yong (戎凱), managing director of the council, who also serves at the panel's chief investigator, said the council has contacted the US' National Transportation Safety Board and Boeing Company to help with the probe.
China Airlines officials, meanwhile, bowed and apologized to the bereaved families for the terrible air disaster.
A number of agitated relatives of the passengers rushed to the China Airlines office in Taipei to gather information related to the crash, and were upset with the company's failure to immediately provide them with details.
China Airlines Senior Vice President James Chang (
"We are regretful for such an unfortunate accident and we would like to pay our gratitude to the government for assisting with the recovery," Chang said.
With the assistance of China Airlines, around 200 relatives of the passengers flew to Makung last night to identify the bodies.
This has been the 14th air crash involving China Airlines since 1969, official statistics indicate. The company's notorious safety record once put it on the list of the world's most dangerous airlines.
The last known fatal China Airlines accident was a crash-landing in Hong Kong in 1999, killing three people.
Over 200 people were killed respectively in the 1994 crash in Nagoya and the 1998 crash in the Taoyuan in the vicinity of CKS International Airport.
The paramount chief of a volcanic island in Vanuatu yesterday said that he was “very impressed” by a UN court’s declaration that countries must tackle climate change. Vanuatu spearheaded the legal case at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, which on Wednesday ruled that countries have a duty to protect against the threat of a warming planet. “I’m very impressed,” George Bumseng, the top chief of the Pacific archipelago’s island of Ambrym, told reporters in the capital, Port Vila. “We have been waiting for this decision for a long time because we have been victims of this climate change for
MASSIVE LOSS: If the next recall votes also fail, it would signal that the administration of President William Lai would continue to face strong resistance within the legislature The results of recall votes yesterday dealt a blow to the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) efforts to overturn the opposition-controlled legislature, as all 24 Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers survived the recall bids. Backed by President William Lai’s (賴清德) DPP, civic groups led the recall drive, seeking to remove 31 out of 39 KMT lawmakers from the 113-seat legislature, in which the KMT and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) together hold a majority with 62 seats, while the DPP holds 51 seats. The scale of the recall elections was unprecedented, with another seven KMT lawmakers facing similar votes on Aug. 23. For a
All 24 lawmakers of the main opposition Chinese Nationalists Party (KMT) on Saturday survived historical nationwide recall elections, ensuring that the KMT along with Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) lawmakers will maintain opposition control of the legislature. Recall votes against all 24 KMT lawmakers as well as Hsinchu Mayor Ann Kao (高虹安) and KMT legislative caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅崐萁) failed to pass, according to Central Election Commission (CEC) figures. In only six of the 24 recall votes did the ballots cast in favor of the recall even meet the threshold of 25 percent of eligible voters needed for the recall to pass,
LETTER, FLAG FLAP: A Chinese man and woman reportedly tried to snatch a letter meant for Taiwanese winners, while China’s team took offense at a Taiwanese flag President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday condemned an alleged attempt by two Chinese to snatch a letter of congratulations handed to Taiwan’s taekwondo team after they won silver at the Summer World University Games in Germany on Wednesday. A Chinese man and woman reportedly tried to snatch a congratulatory letter to athletes Hung Jiun-yi (洪俊義), Jung Jiun-jie (鍾俊傑) and Huang Cho-cheng (黃卓乘) from the Ministry of Education, and then argued with reporters. “Why are you taking our things?” reporters asked the pair. “Does that say ‘Chinese Taipei’?” the two Chinese reportedly asked. Following the incident, Sports Administration Director-General Cheng Shih-chung (鄭世忠) wrote on Threads about
RSS