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バンクーバー 2010/08/03 18:07:46
Crash in Korea scars Air China safety record
By Janes.com Editor Peter Felstead
The crash of an Air China Boeing 767-200, Flight CA129, has brought a tragic end to the prestigious airline’s fatality-free safety record.
Flight CA129 had taken off from Beijing and was on final approach to Kimhae Airport, near Pusan on South Korea’s southeast coast, when it struck a mountainside in bad weather at around 11.45 local time (02.45 GMT).
Of the 155 passengers and 11 crew on board, 115 were killed and 12 are missing, presumed dead. Thirty-nine survived, however, largely because they were in the front of the airliner, which struck the mountainside tail first. The dense forest of the crash site may also have cushioned the airliner’s impact to some extent, while heavy rain helped to extinguish burning aviation fuel, according to officials. The pilot and another crewmember were among the survivors, according to China’s official Xinhua news agency.
Flight CA129’s ‘black box’ flight data recorder was recovered hours after the crash, although the 13-member South Korean crash investigation team said no details of their findings would be revealed until all the flight data had been analysed. However, excerpts of the last moments of conversation between the pilot and the air traffic control tower show the pilot was unaware of the impending disaster. South Korean government statements suggested the aircraft had been blown off course by strong winds, which had forced the airliner to change the course of its final approach.
Air China was established in 1988 and became the country’s main international carrier when the former Civil Aviation Authority of China was split up to form six airlines and a conventional aviation safety agency. Its airliners have been involved in two accidents since the airline’s formation, neither of them fatal: on 22 March 1990 an Air China Trident overran the runway at Guilin, and on 6 July 1995 a Boeing 737-300 crashed after aborting take-off at Guangzhou. Its current fleet of largely Boeing-built aircraft currently numbers 50.
The Boeing 767, of which Flight CA129 was one of 10 in the Air China inventory, has what Jane’s Airport Review News Editor Gunter Endres described as “an excellent safety record”. Only three of the type have been lost over the last 10 years, two of which were Kuwaiti airliners destroyed by the coalition bombing of Baghdad airport in February 1991. The only fatal accident involving the type was on 26 May 1991, when a Lauda Air B767-300 crashed in Thailand following an engine failure, killing all 223 on board.
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