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CNN Live Saturday
Little Hope of Survivors in China Airlines Crash
Aired May 25, 2002 - 22:07 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CATHERINE CALLAWAY, CNN ANCHOR: Researchers combing the Taiwan Strait have little hope that anyone survived today's crash of a China Airlines jetliner. Late word tonight, though, that investigators are picking up some signals from the plane's flight data and voice recorders. They're sending 10 cameras down into the water now, trying to find them.
The Boeing 747 with 225 people aboard gave no distress call before it fell into the sea between Taipei and Hong Kong.
We have details now from CNN's senior Asia correspondent Mike Chinoy.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MIKE CHINOY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): At Taipei's International Airport, scenes of shock and grief, as relatives learn that a China Airlines jumbo jet had crashed en route to Hong Kong, one of dozens of daily flights on the busiest air route in Asia.
DAVID FEI, CHINA AIRLINES SPOKESMAN (through translator): I have bad news to report. China Airlines flight CI611, a Boeing 747 flying from Taipei to Hong Kong, at 3:30 p.m. crashed into the sea.
CHINOY: The jet with 225 people on board went down in waters about 50 kilometers off Taiwan's western coast. There were no reports of survivors. With operations to locate the wreckage and retrieve bodies getting underway, the cause of the crash remained a mystery. The jet had been flying at its normal cruising altitude of 35,000 feet when it suddenly disappeared from radar screens.
FEI (through translator): The plane lost contact with the control tower near the sea. It was manufactured in 1979 and had been in service for 22 years.
CHINOY: Taiwan aviation officials said there was no distress call from the cockpit crew. Taiwan television showed pictures of residents in rural county along the coast, finding scraps of paper and other items with China Airlines stickers on them in rice paddies some 70 kilometers from the crash site.
"A lot of debris started falling from the sky," said this villager. "It landed all over the place and we went to look at it." Name cards, luggage tags, and photographs, apparently from the doomed flight were also found. Airline executives expressed doubt that mechanical failure would have caused such an abrupt catastrophe. But senior government officials said they did not think an explosion was responsible.
The 747 200 was one of the oldest planes in CAL's fleet, and was due to be retired from service soon because of its age. This was the fourth fatal crash for China Airlines in less than a decade. In the 1990s, hundreds of passengers died in accidents in Japan, Taiwan and here in Hong Kong. In the past two years, the airline has mounted an aggressive effort to change its safety reputation, upgrading training facilities and programs, recruiting new pilots, streamlining maintenance and management, and stressing its commitment to safety.
(on camera): This is where the last fatal China Airlines crashed in August, 1999 occurred, Hong Kong International Airport. On this weekend, as in Taipei, the scene of grief and anguish, as relatives of some of the victims prepared to fly to Taiwan, in the hope of learning more about the accident in which their loved ones died.
Mike Chinoy, CNN, Hong Kong.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CALLAWAY: U.S. government investigators are on their way to Taiwan to assist in the crash investigation. They are also liable to notice some striking similarities to the TWA flight 800 disaster. Both planes were older 747s that fell out of the sky in good weather for no obvious reason. And earlier this evening, former NTSB vice chairman Robert Francis told CNN that mechanical failure or perhaps a bomb are possibilities.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ROBERT FRANCIS, FMR. NTSB VICE-CHAIR: It could have exploded either because of a mechanical problem, or because of a criminal act, a bomb. It also -- it doesn't rule out the possibility that something else happened to the airplane and that the pilots lost control and the aircraft broke apart. I think that's the less likely of the three possible scenarios, just because if that had been the case, the controllers probably would have heard from the aircraft.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
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