The pilots of a Far Eastern Air Transport flight that in May was forced to return to Taipei International Airport (Songshan airport) after encountering bad weather in Kinmen have been disciplined for not calling “Mayday” when their airplane was low on fuel.
The company said that the pilots made the right decision to return to Songshan airport, but the sudden change in wind direction led the airplane to a 15-minute deviation and an extra waste of fuel.
The pilots were each given a demerit, the company said, adding that it would boost training for pilots on fuel consumption.
The company added that the pilots did not issue a call for help because their airplane had been given priority to land and were already preparing to land.
The Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) yesterday said it would hold a meeting to determine how to discipline the pilots, who were grounded after the incident pending action by the regulator.
“There are not that many pilots who are so gutsy. It was a mistake that should not have been made,” CAA flight standards division director Clark Lin (林俊良) said.
Lin said it is extremely rare for pilots not to call “Mayday” when their airplane is running so low on fuel.
Far Eastern Air Flight FE061 took off from Songshan airport bound for Kinmen on May 30 at 9:54am.
On the way, it circled over the Penghu Islands for nearly 30 minutes at the instruction of air traffic controllers at Kinmen Airport, because of bad weather, and then had to abort an attempted landing because of poor visibility.
The pilots decided to return to Songshan airport and landed without incident.
However, during an inspection afterward, ground crew found only 2,000 pounds (1,137 liters) of fuel left, far less than the 3,700-pound (2,103 liters) safety reserve requirement.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater