China Airlines criticized Hong Kong's Civil Aviation Department about the handling of an inquiry into a crash by one of its planes in 1999, the South China Morning Post said.
The airline is disputing the Civil Aviation Department's finding that the plane's pilot was at fault and plans to use a newly obtained video of the crash as evidence to overturn the inquiry's conclusion, the paper said, citing a senior official at the company, who didn't want to be identified.
The airline has called an accident review board, the first time this has happened in Hong Kong, beginning on Nov. 17. A video of the crash supports the airline's claim that the reasons for the accident were caused in the final seconds of the landing and no pilot could have avoided what happened, the paper said.
The video wasn't released to the airline. It was sent to the Aviation Safety Council in Taiwan within days of the crash in 1999, the paper said.
A 400-page Hong Kong Civil Aviation Department report -- which hasn't been made public because of the review -- concluded the cause of the 1999 accident was Italian pilot Gerrardo Lettich's inability to control the speed of the plane's descent, the paper said.
China Airlines flight CI 642 flipped over and crashed as it tried to land during a typhoon on Aug. 22, 1999, killing three people and injuring 200 others.
Taiwan is to receive the first batch of Lockheed Martin F-16 Block 70 jets from the US late this month, a defense official said yesterday, after a year-long delay due to a logjam in US arms deliveries. Completing the NT$247.2 billion (US$7.69 billion) arms deal for 66 jets would make Taiwan the third nation in the world to receive factory-fresh advanced fighter jets of the same make and model, following Bahrain and Slovakia, the official said on condition of anonymity. F-16 Block 70/72 are newly manufactured F-16 jets built by Lockheed Martin to the standards of the F-16V upgrade package. Republic of China
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