Another little known unexplained airliner loss in the Far East
 

30 January 1979 a VARIG 707-323C, PP-VLU (s/n 19235) en route NRT-LAX crashed in cruise, about one hour after takeoff at Narita.
At the time it was believed that the airplane may have been hit by a missle, but the true cause of the crash/disappearance has not been published. The cargo consisted of an art gallery. Ironically, the captain of that flight was the captain of the B707-345C PP-VJZ that had crashed short of Orly in 1973 after an uncontrollable cabin fire.

CI611 flight path and radar data in .pdf
 

This will make some interesting reading....

Flight path and radar data:

http://www.asc.gov.tw/asc/_file/2006...I611-RADAR.pdf

Radio Transmissions:

http://www.asc.gov.tw/asc/_file/2006...11-ATCtran.pdf

Very interesting are the course reversals and speed degradations indicated from the previous link. Could be stall/spin, breakup ….. could be other scenarios. I hate to add to the pre CVR/FDR analysis, investigations, and conclusions and emphasize this is conjecture. Long-term investigations will, I am relatively sure, will reveal the ultimate culprit.

But…..if there were an explosion of some sort my guess would be that the trajectory would be forward, unless one wing or part of one wing was the first to separate (i.e. relative constant heading/course), I welcome to be contradicted in what should be a straightforward and intellectual discussion…..please don’t let this post degenerate into another PPRUNE bashing of previous posts…. It seems to be heading in that direction. There is immense talent in the members of this forum. It is my fear that some are scared away when a thread rapidly degenerates from a truly informed, intellectual discussion to a traditional PPRUNE bashing ceremony….

As a follow up to my previous post, please look at the number of "posts" vs. the nunber of "views" on this thread. There is certainly immense talent in the "viewers" who have chosen not to post.

Wow, there are some pretty crazy altitude and heading deviations commencing around 15:28.43 - 2,200 feet UP in a 12 second period to 1,800 feet DOWN in the next 12 seconds, accompanied by heading changes of up to 180 degrees.

The altitude, airspeed and heading deviations are indicative of an encounter with severe weather and a possible engine(s) flame out.

Were there any reports of Cb activity at that time yesterday? Is Taipei's radar weather-suppressed?

From the May 27 New York Times (Reuters):

"TAIPEI (Reuters) - Taiwan investigators sifted through wreckage of a China Airlines jet Monday to try to find out why it fell apart at over 30,000 feet, but the military dismissed speculation it may have been hit by a Chinese missile.

"Frogmen were expected to recover the black-box flight recorders which could yield information on what caused the Boeing 747-200, belonging to Taiwan's largest carrier, to crack up and plunge into the sea Saturday, killing all 225 people on board in Asia's third major air disaster in six weeks.

"Now that we know the location of the black boxes, we should be able to retrieve them today,'' said an official at the government's emergency response center.

"Fishing boats and naval vessels have so far plucked about 80 bodies and several pieces of wreckage from the rough waters off the west coast of Taiwan.

"The Taiwan military spokesman dismissed speculation that a Chinese missile may have hit the aircraft.

"Communist China has denied it. We think its denial is highly credible,'' the spokesman said by telephone, responding to a report on cable news network Formosa TV which quoted an unidentified military analyst as saying a Chinese missile may be to blame.

"Based on our own judgement, we can also say it's absolutely impossible,'' the spokesman said, adding that Taiwan's military was not conducting any exercises or missile-testing in the area at the time of the crash.

"The emergency response center said signals from the flight recorders showed they were about 20 nautical miles north of the island of Penghu, off western Taiwan.

"They're about 50 to 60 meters (130 to 165 feet) below the surface. They're not difficult to retrieve,'' Kay Yong, managing director of the cabinet's Aviation Safety Council, told reporters."

> But?..if there were an explosion of some sort my guess would be that the trajectory would be forward, unless one wing or part of one wing was the first to separate (i.e. relative constant heading/course), <

I think the issue today is to time the initiation of the event, whatever it was, to the radar trace. It is entirely possible that any possible asymetrical wing effect was later in the sequence (ala TWA800, PA103, AA587)

height + speed changes appear consistant with three stalls and two recoveries????

In early summer of 1991 LaudaAir lost a 767 due to a reverser deployment in flight. Seeing the variation in altitude as well as in heading, a similar situation could have occurred. Obviously just a guess, based on the info of this board.

p.s. good point Shore Guy.

>In early summer of 1991 LaudaAir lost a 767 due to a reverser deployment in flight. Seeing the variation in altitude as well as in heading, a similar situation could have occurred. Obviously just a guess, based on the info of this board.
<
There have also been other uncommanded deployments in flight documented on DFDR, none of which match the reported traces of CI611.

Also the reported flight envelop for CI611 should have plenty of control margin for an unexpected reverser deployment (unlike the early climb envelop)

Don't leave out the possibility of a struggle in the cockpit either. That BA aircraft made some pretty impressive maneuvers over africa as was very lucky it didn't come apart.

Cheers
Wino

What about fatique? I understand that high density, short range routes are common in that part of the world, which must have an adverse affect on an aircraft that age. The Aloha Airlines 737 that lost half its upper fuselage was got down with just one loss of life. Perhaps this was simular, but more catashropic, or maybe they were simply not so lucky.
What ever the cause, whoever the 'guilty' party( if any) my condolences to the relatives, friends and collegues of the pasengers and crew.

Thanks Peanut Butter for links

It looks like plane flown inverted for some time, and it is not clear for me whenever data is based on echo trail or transponder returns for some graph, if transponder has been stop at 15:28:40 it might be debriefs showing echo both on military and primary radar explaining such strange oscillation..

On the flight path and radar data reports that Peanut Butter obtained. Why would there be a gap in the traces at 15:16? The military data plot shows it dropping 1,000 ft at the same time.

Could very well be pilot error, have lost pieces off of 2 airplanes in the recent past due exceeding airframe restrictions. I also wonder how they get insurance!

Very interresting radar data.

The military plot shows one signal point with about 1000 ft less altitude but maintaines climb afterwards on the same line as before, this looks like a momantary malfunction of the altitude encoder (caused by whatever).
About 10 seconds later the civil radar plot ends for about 100 seconds and then starts again. Altitude is still in coincidence with data before the gap, but heading and altitude shows some deviations from the normal values indicating some trouble. Military data does not look unusual at that time.
At shortly after 7:28 the civil plot ends and the military shows a plane in great trouble with heading reversals.
A altitude gain of about 2500 ft and a ground speed reduction by half together with a heading reversal looks like a half loop upwards. This is followed by total loss of ground speed (which means very steep dive) but only about 5000 ft drop, before military data plot also end (about 3 1/2 minutes later).

Time between first indications of trouble and loss of signal (at the same altitude !) is more than 8 1/2 minutes, and there was no time for an emergency call for any of the 3 crew members ? Verry unusual.

Aviation week online reports, none of the 80 bodies recovered so far show burn marks. Otherweise some sort of fire could explain the temporary signal loss due to loss of electric energy for the transponder, this could also explain the missing emergency call simply because the radio was not avaiable. Very strange alltogether.

Let´s wait for the FDR/CVR and hope data aquisation does not stop at the time the civil signal was lost ...

The radar values for heading, airspeed, and groundtrack position are so bizarre and change so abruptly that one has to wonder whether these are all of the same target, or whether this reflects a capture of that part of the plane that presented the greatest cross-section at any moment. There were reports in the press of one part of the plane going 'backwards', while three parts went forward.

>Sorry to sound like a moron chaps, but could someone, in a couple of lines, summarise what happened to this machine? Have tried reading back through these pages but it's all too confusing for someone with a brain the size of a single bacterium.

And yes, I know it broke up in flight but what was the profile and what's the latest theory? Am currently stuck in the back-of-beyond (Portland, USA) and can't find any other info.
<

Good summary Flat Spin, that about sums up where the overall investigation is. Now if only we all can be a little more patient maybe we can work on this, one fact at a time, and slowly break away from this confusion.

To add to glue ball (and others I think) comments re structural failure, this from airsafe.com

28 April 1988; Aloha 737-200; near Maui, HI: The aircraft had an explosive decompression due to metal fatigue in upper cabin area. The crew was able to execute a successful emergency landing with a significant portion of the upper fuselage missing. One of the five crew members was killed.
Note: Even though no passengers were killed and therefore not a fatal airline event, this mishap is included in this list because of the effect it had on air safety practices. As a result of this accident, there were a number of regulatory changes involving inspection requirements for older aircraft such as the one involved in this event.

Link

Nobody seems to be making the right connections. It is the
August, 1985 B747 crash (JAL 123 Haneda-Osaka, 527 people
killed) that this mostly recalls. It too ocurred after a cabin
event as theyr eached altitude. The aft pressure bulkhead
failed, inflating and blowing off part of the vertical fin. The
plane went into a dutch roll oscillation cycle, flew an erratic
course and began to spiral in, the crew recovered from that and
figured out how to control it but they hit a mountain in Gunma
before they could gain back altitude.
The failure was blamed on a Boeing field repair. It was a high
time plane with lots of operational cycles, a candidate for slow
cycle fatigue if there ever was one.