Sudden break-up likely cause of China Airlines crash: expert

HONG KONG - A China Airlines plane that crashed into the sea on Saturday with 225 on board en route from Taipei to Hong Kong almost certainly disintegrated suddenly, an aviation expert in Hong Kong said yesterday.

"It is fairly certain the aircraft suddenly broke apart," Peter Lok Kung-nam, former director general of Hong Kong's Civil Aviation Department, said.

Searchers scouring the sea had found no survivors yesterday.

Speculation about a mid-air explosion was heightened by television footage of farmers holding up debris from the Boeing 747-200 aircraft in the western Taiwan coastal county of Changhua, about 75km from the crash site.

Meanwhile, a Boeing airlines spokesman in Hong Kong said a team of Boeing investigators was on the way to Taiwan from the United States, at the request of Taiwan aviation authorities.

Lok suggested three possible causes: an explosion, sudden de-pressurisation which could have knocked the crew out, or the more remote possibility of a collision in the air, perhaps with a military aircraft.

A likely reason was a mid-air fuel-tank explosion, Lok said, like the one that brought down a Trans World Airline Boeing 747 in 1996 near New York.

American experts believe that in the TWA case, the plane's belly tank filled with fuel vapour which combined with air in the tank to form a combustible mixture.

The electrical fuel pump then short-circuited and produced a spark which ignited the combustible mix, Lok said.

Another possible reason for the China Airlines crash was that the aircraft may have had a sudden de-pressurisation, while on manual control.

"You have to get down to survivable altitude in a minute and a half flat.

"If you don't do that, everybody will just lose consciousness, including the crew of course," Lok said.

A more remote possibility was that something hit the aircraft.

"In the past, there have been incidents where civilian pilots report that military aircraft fly too close to them. It has happened in Taiwan skies before," Lok said.

Meanwhile, rough seas slowed the search yesterday for bodies and debris from the crash.

Swells up to 3m high battered fishing boats and coast guard ships that were scanning the waters around the crash site, north of the Taiwanese island chain of Penghu, about 50km off Taiwan's western coast.



Near the crash site yesterday the smell of fuel was thick in the air and there was a fuel slick as big as a football field.

Rescue officials said 78 bodies had been found.

The passengers included 190 Taiwanese, 14 people from Macau and Hong Kong, one Singaporean and one Swiss citizen.

The Boeing 747-200 had been flying for 22 years, and China Airlines planned to retire it next month.

The airline has argued it was safe and was overhauled last year.

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