China Airlines Flight 676 falls out of the
sky, crashing into a residential
neighborhood in Taipei. It was a horrific
crash. Pieces of the wreckage fell onto
houses. More than 200 people are dead,
making this the worst aviation disaster in
Taiwan's history.
Okay, let's get to work. I want photos of
everything amid the devastation. Recovery
teams locate the crucial flight recorders.
Hopefully the NTSP can extract some useful
data from them. Crash experts from around
the world assist in the investigation.
I've got something for you. We're on it.
But 11 seconds of the flight are almost
impossible to explain. What the heck
happened here in 11 seconds is
like an eternity. That verges is
unbelievable.
At least the weather has improved for
now. China Airlines Flight 676
is cruising over the South China Sea as it
nears Taipei City, Taiwan.
The flight is getting the land at Taipei's
Chiang Kai Sheikh airport, the primary
gateway to Thai1 and is the busiest
airport on the island. This evening,
Captain Longlinin Kang is at the controls.
An air force veteran, he's clocked over
2000 hours on the AirB Bar 300.
This flight is special.
I hope you're enjoying the flight tonight.
Can I give you some water? His wife and
children are on board returning from a
holiday in Bali. It's a special moment for
the family. There is no one that you will
have rather fly them than yourself
ensuring of their safety. Tonight's flight
left Bali at 3:27pm and is
scheduled to touch down in Taipei just
after eight.
I'll talk to the cabin. We're seven
minutes from descent Tonight Kang is
paired with a rookie. Okay, thanks. He has
far more experience on the A300 than his
first officer D. Sheng Jiang. First
officer's job is help pilot flying to
handle all the non essential job all non
essential dututy so pilot of flying can
concentrate on flying the aircraft.
Yes. Hello. Hi. We're about seven minutes
until weart descent. The descent is the
busiest, most critical phase of any
flight. Weather is 16 degrees and cloudy.
We won't need any wheelchairs tonight,
right? No, not tonight.
Look at the EC cam, the trimm tank. The
captain notices an error message
concerning the trim tank. The trim tank
system moves fuel between tanks in the
wings and tail keeping the plane balanced
and fuel efficient.
Let's see what we can do.
The auto trim Seems
like we don't need to do anything. Yeah,
we do. See the trim tank system fault.
The captain guides the first officer
through the issue the trim tank system
fault.
Trim tank system in flight if no forward
transfer not our case.
It's not a critical problem. Okay, clear.
So you see, that's it. That's a trim tank
system for procedure. It's just a
minor hiccup. It's easy to clear the
message.
The plane is now 25 minutes from the
airport descent.
The captain prompts the first officer to
check in with controllers.
Control Dynasty 676.
Requesting Dynasty 676.
Descend and maintain flight level two
fifty. The tower issues a new altitude of
25,000ft. Descending to flight level
250. Heading 360 on our way.
Checke get the crew also needs to
confirm their gate information with
airline operations on the ground.
Operations Dynasty 676.
Disregard Dynasty 676.
The first officer makes a careless mistake
this side.
Unfortunately, E4 made a request on the
ATC China. So not the
correct frequency of the company reduce.
It's quite embarrassing because basically
you callus the operress with your callsine
so every pilot in that area.
No humid mistake.
The plane is now 45 miles from the
airport.
And the weather is getting worse.
The lightning is pretty strong.
The power of that lightning. Lightning
does not pose a direct physical threat to
the aircraft. But it usually comes with
severiet thunderstorms, strong winds.
That's not the kind of conditions that you
want to land at the airport. The captain
wants to get his plane on the ground
before the storm worsens. Flaps 23
miles from the airport. The pilots extend
the flaps as they reduce speed.
Flaps 20 below
them. The busy streets of Taipei's
sprawling suburbs are shrouded in fog and
mist.
Feasibility is always a concern for
pilots, especially when landing. If you
can't see the Runway, you poste a danger
to the safety of the aircraft. You could
either miss the Runway altogether or even
worse, a control flight into terrain.
God, that tail was really strong. The
captain pitches the nose down for the
descent.
Landing lights on. They're just
moments from landing. Landing checklist
complete. But the captain doesn't like the
approach. Gor go around.
Just 13300ft from the ground. The captain
aborts the landing attempt.
Pilots can go around for any reasons.
Like a non stable approach or runong
way is blocked or by atc'or
pilot not satisfied for the approach. And
we have go around in the airport. Maybe
one go around per day. It's quite common
operations. But this go around is going
tragically wrong.
Dynasty 6:76 confirm go around.
An alarm warns the crew that the plane is
losing lift.
With no lift, airplane knowse
will drop and then airplane will de
and then you get in trouble fast.
The aircraft is up front, is clearng left
of the Runway anding towards a densely
populated residential area. Dynasty 676,
Taipei what is your status?
All vehicles and A300 has just crashed on
the roadway north of 05 left.
The burning remains of China Airlines
Flight 676 are scattered along a busy road
near Chiang Kai Shek Airport.
It was a horrific crash. There was a
severiet fire from the jet fuel and it
took more than 60 firefighters from across
the city to put out the fire.
How could a modern jetliner performing a
go around fall out of the sky and crash
into a residential neighborhood?
Any survivors?
All 182 passengers and 14 crew
on board China Airlines Flight 676 are
dead including the captain's family.
Six more people have been killed on the
ground.
It fell into a residential neighborhood.
Pieces of the wreckage fell onto houses
into cars. It'taiwan's worst
air disaster.
It was a very devastating incident know
with many innocent lives lost at instant.
It's also China Airline'second crash in
less than five years.
In 1994, Flight 140 crashed in
Nagoya, Japan killing 264 of the 271
on board that aircraft was also an A300.
The Taiwanese people are very concerned
and frightened because they want to make
sure that the government will ensure that
the airline is safe to travel. Desperate
to allay the public's fears, the
government grounds the airline's entire
fleet of A300s until the planes can be
checked for faults. The decision throws
Taiwan's air travel into chaos.
Taiwan is an island, so air transport is
incredibly important and with the aircraft
grounded, a lot of flights were cancelled
and many people's travel plans were out
the window.
The Taiwanese Civil Aeronautics
Administration will lead the high profile
investigation. The pressure to find
answers is intense.
Okay, let's get to work.
I want photos of everything. We all want
to know what happened quickly and get this
solved. But the same token, you don't want
to leave something unfound because you
rush through it. And so even though there
may be pressure from the government, you
have to push back, say we'll do this as
fast as we can. Amid the devastation,
investigators focus first on recovering as
much of the plane as they can. Some pieces
may not be important, but the first thing
is to do you have all the parts of the
airplane? Do you have the wing tips, the
tail tips, the nose? But when you have
buildings and cars and everything else,
it becomes a lot more difficult they also
plot the position of every piece of
debris. Soon a pattern emerges that paints
a vivid picture of the way the plane came
down. Whatever went wrong, it caused them
to come in steep and flat.
They pancake looking just at the impact.
It gives you initial indication that this
airplane, although it was coming down
vertically very quickly, it didn't have a
lot of forward velocity to it. Also, the
pitch att added toe. The airplane wasn't
severely pitched down or pitched up. It
was a very kind of more of a flat impact,
which is a little bit unusual. The high
velocity impact destroyed most of the
plane, but both engines survived. I see a
distinct damage pattern. If the
engines are running at impact, basically
you'll bend or shear off the fan blades
opposite to the direction of rotation.
Also you'll see where they ingest a fair
amount of debris, usually vegetation. At
the same time engines
are running when they hit, hard to know
for sure if they're working properly. So
there are numerous mechanical hints that
investigators can get to determine if
there's power on the engine. How much
power? Well, that's a little bit
different. Then you need to turn to flight
recorders or some sort of recorded data to
get at that. Investigators also recover
the jack screw mechanism used to operate
the flaps. If a pilot chooses
the wrong flap settings, there can be two
dangers. One is you select flaps
at too high of a speed and that could
structurally damage the flaps. The other
danger is that you could be at a low speed
and retract flaps. Now you don't have
enough lift and the airplane is going to
start coming out of the air. The nuts
almost at the stop. So the flaps were
partially extended at 20 flaps 20.
There's no sign of structural failure and
the flaps were in the correct position
early on the investigation. The process is
fairly simple. A shotgun approach. We're
looking at everything. There's one theory
in particular that investigators want to
explore.
Maybe the weather had something to do with
this. We know from the weather forecast
that the weather was going to get worse.
There was fog moving in, there was
lightning. And so you start looking at all
those factors, the power of that
lightning. Investigators turned to
the tower controller for more insight into
the weather around Chiang Kai Shek Airport
at the time China Airline 676 crashed.
So what kind of winds are we looking at?
Did a dangerous condition called wind
shear bring the plane down?
God, that tail'really strong. Wind shear
is caused by powerful winds that can formm
close to the Runway during thunderstorms,
creating forces so powerful they can slam
a plane into the Ground visibility
was above minimum. No wind shear.
The weather was fine. The weather theory
is quickly ruled out. We knew there was
lightning approaching the airport. The
winds, however, were fairly light. No
severe turbulence, no severe downdraft.
We didn't see any weather out there. That
by itself should cause this airplane to
be, you know, pushed out of the sky. Take
a look at this. But controllers did notice
something which is troubling about the
flight.
Interesting. Airlines usually
descend to the Runway at a gradual 3
degree angle. But Flight 676 had a
much faster, steeper descent.
You're right, they're way too high on
approach. All the way in at a point
it's about five miles from the Runway.
The airplane is 1,000ft higher than it
should be for that position. And so
they've got a problem.
Go over, go around. The finding explains
why the captain called for a go around.
But it still doesn't explain what caused
the crash. A go around inter self is
not a cause for concern at the crash site.
The painstaking search of the debris pays
off. Investigators find both of the black
box flight recorders. Great job.
The flight data recorders are essential
for finding those little bits of
information that you can't see in the
wreckage itself. It gives us a lot more
data to now put into our little basket of
information. Investigators get more
critical information with the discovery of
the plane'ph FedEx or full authority
digital engine controllers. The PHADEC is
just like a flight data recorder, except
it's specific only to the engine operation
or if there were any engine anomalies that
were occurring during the flight.
Hopefully the NTSP can extract some useful
data from them. Recovering the data from
the US made controllers requires special
expertise. So investigators ask the
National Transportation Safety Board to
oversee the download. They were slightly
damaged, but they weren't burned. And that
gave investigators hope. While the PH
FedEx are transported to Connecticut in
the United States.
Welcome to Canberra. The flight recorders
are sent to the Bureau of Air Safety
Investigation or BASI in Canberra,
Australia. Well, we've had expertise and
facilities for the replay and analysis of
flight recorders going back to the 1970s.
Let's find you some answers. We've had
close links in the Asia Pacific region for
many decades. So it's natural that our
expertise would be made available to the
Taiwanese in these international acts
investigations. Each country brings a
different area of expertise and the
purpose behind this is global aviation
safety. Because if an accident happened in
one place, well, it could have happened
easily in your own country in Connecticut.
Hold it there. NTSB systems Analyst
Jeff Gazeti begins recovering the Data
from the Fedadeex of Flight 676 with helpd
from the manufacturer.
The manufacturer is very much needed.
It's their laboratory. However, the
procedure is dictated by the
investigators. That box was not opened
until investigators like myself showed up.
And in front of everybody, we unlocked,
unsealed the boxes and began to extract
the components that we needed.
Well, here goes nothing.
There's no guarantee that the data
survived. These chips were not designed to
be crash worhy. They were designed so that
an airline can download information from
the PHC and conduct maintenance on the
engines as needed.
Today they get lucky.
So I was very relieved to see that the
memory did survive on the chips of the PHA
deck. So now we had something to work
with.
Okay, let's see what we've got. Were the
engines functioning properly? The phadec
memory will not only point out the anomaly
of an engine, but exactly when it happened
and at what altitude. And that data is
crucial for investigators.
The data confirms the investigator's
observation that the engines were working
when the plane hit the ground. But
Something inexplicable happened 20 seconds
before that.
What the heck happened here?
Engines were operating normally during the
entire accident flight, except during a
certain portion of the go around in which
both engines surged at the same time,
which is anomalous. Shouldn't happen.
Aircraft engines ingest huge quantities of
air and use it to spin a turbine to create
thr ###ust if that air is disrupted, the
engine can't produce enough thrust and
will backfire or surge. It's kind of like
walking into a room that suddenly has no
air and you're gasping and you're
surging.
Campbell, I've got something for you.
The NTSB updates the Australians about
their findings. Engine search.
Okay, we're on it.
But what caused the surge could
be ingesting birds into the engine.
It could be a mechanical malfunction
that's allowing too much fuel or too
little air into the eng and we just didn't
know.
Let's take a look at the Australian Bureau
of Air Safety investigation. Neil Campbell
reviews a simulation of the final seconds
of Flight 676 based on the information
captured by the flight data recorder.
In this case, a flight Data recorder
recorded 115 separate parameters. It tells
us things about the aircraft performance,
its configuration, whether the flaps are
up or down, the landing gears up or down.
It tells us what the crew inputs were,
the aircraft responses to those inputs,
and also the status of various aircraft
systems. Nearly at the Airport.
Campbell scrutinizes the data carefully,
looking for anything that might explain
why the engines of a modern A300 surged
and lost trust.
He comes to go around.
Go over. Go around.
Hold on. What have we here?
15 seconds after the go around begins,
investigators noticed something
surprising. Stop.
We saw the aircraft pitched up to a pitch
attitude of over 40 degrees. This is a
very large value, very unusual. Normally
during a go around, we'd expect to see 15
degrees pitch attitude. No wonder the
engine surged with the nose of the plane.
Pitched up so steeply. Air can't flow
through the engine to create thrust. The
airplane was at a very high attitude.
This prevented the engine from taking in
smooth, continuous airflow. Ah, now the
steep angle has another disastrous
consequence. If an aircraft pitches up too
steeply, it disrupts air FLW over the
wings, preventing them from providing
lift. Pitched up so high, they stalled
the plane.
And when an airliner turns straight up at
such a high angle, the airspeed bleeds off
significantly and gets you closer to an
aerodynamic stall. With the loss of
airflow into the engines and lift from the
wings, Flight 676 begins to drop from
the sky. You're not flying. You're almost
becoming a falling object at that point.
See that again.
He's trying to get the nose down. The data
shows the captain did what he could to
regain control. Pilots are
trying to get the nose down and get the
speed back up. Airflow over the wings
again. This take time and the situation
where seconds are a big deal, but it's too
late.
They ran out of time.
Unfortunately, the altitude was too low
and they were not able to recover the
aircraft in time. If they'd had another
few thousand feet, there's a good
possibility that the crew would have been
able to recover the aircraft successfully.
It's a tragic discovery, but why did
Flight 676 pitch up so steeply in the
first place? Campbell combs through data
from earlier in the flight. Throughout the
investigative process, everything gets
looked at and relooked at. Look at
this. That's weird.
Something strange took place on board
flight 676 just seconds before the stall.
Bring up pitch and elevator, please.
You can see the pilots making control
inputs here and here.
But during these 11 seconds, the plane
is pitching up. Investigators determined
that once the pilots initiated the go
around, no inputs on the control column
were made as the plane continued to pitch
up dangerously. The aircraft will
naturally want to pitch up as the engine
thrust increases. So I would expect the
crew to counteract that pitching up by
pushing down on the Controls. Looking at
the flight recorder data and seeing that
there was no pitch controls, no changes in
those controls, it did make me wonder what
the crew were thinking. So no
one's flying the plane. It's very unusual
that there would be no control inputs by
the pilots during this period. Very
surprising in 11 seconds in this situation
is like an eternity in fact, to just sit
there and do nothing while this airplane
is pitching up, losing speed, having
issues. That vertge is unbelievable.
Do you think the controls are jammeded
just for these 11 seconds? No way.
There's three independent flight control
systems for pitch, roll and
yaw. So it's the elevators, ailerons and
rudder. All those systems showed that
there was no activity for that 11 second
period. But prior to the go around,
during the early part of the flight and
during the recovery from the stall, there
were inputs made on all those systems.
And the aircraft response was as expected.
If the controls were working, why didn't
the crew do anything? This was a stunning
finding to us. Whenever you're faced with
evidence of improper actions by a flight
crew, you have to ask why? Was it because
they were perhaps intoxicated? Was it
perhaps because they were incapacitated?
You really have to get into the human
factor element of this.
We need to know everything about these
guys. Background, training, favorite
foods, the works.
Thank you. Investigators searched
to explain why two trained pilots allowed
Flight 676 to pitch up so steeply that it
lost lift and stalled.
When you see a situation where the pilot
actions frankly don't make any sense, you
wonder is there something medically wrong
with the pilots? Alcohol, drugs, you know,
anything else going on? They review the
pilot's post mortem toxicology tests.
No san. They'incapacitated.
You have to be very methodical. You can't
allow any biases or opinions
to get in the way of you collecting facts.
Because at this point, that's all you're
doing.
No red flags in the Creu's flying records
either.
Nothing stood out that would explain what
happened here. Thank you.
Investigators pin their hopes of finding
answers on the cockpit voice.
Okay, let's hear it.
The cockpit voice recorder gives you those
little pieces of information, otherwise
you wouldn't have. It's critical to
understand timing of the crew. How are
they working together? What's the tone of
the cockhead? Whether's 16 degrees and
cloudy. We won't need any wheelchairs
tonight, right? The team starts the
recording 30 minutes before the end of the
flight.
Look at the. The TR Trump tank.
They listen intently to everything. The
Pilots said trim
tank system in flight. If no forward
transfer. Not our case.
Okay, clear. So you see, that's it.
That's a trim tank system for procedure.
This captain is spending an awful lot of
time helping his first officer.
Normally you have a division of labor.
However, this captain is doing almost all
the flying and monitoring himself. He's
not engaging the first officer and really
helping with things. Operations Dynasty
676.
Disregard Dynasty 676. When the first
officer uses the wrong channel to call
airline operations on the ground this
side, the captain intervenes by making
radio calls himself, which is contrary to
procedure. I think in the captain's mind,
this guy's incompetent and I can't trust
him to do a simple task. And so the
captain, what he do, he started doing more
on his own. Don't write that down. We're
descending. Okay. The captain begins
criticizing the first officer's actions.
Okay. The captain
felt that the first officer was not
performing his task up to his standards,
and it might be easier and faster to do
everything himself.
What are you doing? I'm keying in the
data. Don't waste too much time on that.
What's the Q and H? It's a risky
situation. It sets up a problem where this
first officer may be almost afraid to take
action without the captain's permission.
Statistics show that over 80% of aircraft
accidents have human performance as a
contributing factor. So it's very, very
important to work together effectively as
a team, to have good communication and
to to make the best decisions they can.
Even under stressful situations,
you see that the lightning is pretty
strong. The worsening weather puts even
more pressure on the busy captain. The
part of that lightning. Bad teamwork,
task overload, and now weather.
Cockpit was a stressful environment. The
captain in particular was worried about
the deteriorating weather at Taip AI and
whether he might need to divert or not.
It's what investigators hear next that
gives them a vital clue.
Hold on. You hear that again?
Hu. That's the autopilot switching off.
There's a distinct sound or an oral
warning that occurs when the autopilot
disengages. And it's called a cavalry
charge.
Switching the autopilot off is a routine
part of the flight. Landing lights on.
But at this stage of the flight, it was
unusual to hear it and very unusual that
there was no comment by the crew. The
pilots don't discuss why the autopilot has
disengaged. Come on, guys, talk to each
other. You would expect the captain
to say, I'm taking over. I have control.
Or at least some comment between the two
crew about the fact the autopilots
disengaged, but there was no comment at
all. Landing checkl was complete.
In my opinion after the criticism by the
captain to the first officer. He was just
going to respond to any direct request
from the captain.
Goa go around. Six seconds after
investigators hear the autopilot
disengage, the captain initiates a go
around without the autopilot. The captain
needs to make inputs manually on the yoke
to control pitch, but he doesn't.
The autopilot is crucial because that
autopilot prevents the airplane from
pitching up. Whenever you're initiating a
go around,
I don't think the captain knows the
autopilot is off. What the captain
didn't seem to catch was that the
autopilot was no longer flying the
airplane. Even if the captain doesn't
realize the autopilot is disengaged and
the first officer doesn't bring it to his
attention, it doesn't explain why neither
pilot noticed the plane was pitching up to
the point of stalling. Looking at your
instmentation, you can tell that things
are going wrong. You should make
corrections. It becomes very difficult
investigation to figure that part out.
See up to the start of the go around,
Investigators focus on the pilot's actions
during the critical 11 seconds that led to
a devastating stall of China Airlines
Flight 676.
Go lower. Go around.
Gear up. Gear down.
They discover that while the plane is
pitching up, the pilots debate how to
configure the plane for the go around
maneuver. Cure up.
Gear up. First. He should be calling for
flaps before gear heading select plus
plus 10 flaps.
It distracts them from their instruments
which show the plane is in danger of
stalling. It's for a mess during
the go around. That's when you really have
to have your act together. You're close to
the ground, a lot of things are happening
and you've got to be on the same page.
That didn't happen here. Investigators now
have a better understanding of the pilot's
behavior prior to the stall. But it
doesn't answer a key question. Who turned
the autopilot off and why?
The captain was under a lot of stress and
high workload. Under those conditions,
people can make mistakes. He's near the
end of his approach and he's too high.
The team returns to the flight data
recorder for clues. Somehow the autopilot
gets switched off. God, the tail was
really strong. Data reveals the captain
did something unusual right before the
autopilot is disengaged here.
He's really at a crunch point. He's still
too high. So he gives the control column
an extra push.
Investigators suspect the captain pushes
the nose down hard to try to salvage his
too high approach.
But when they dig into the Airbus 300
manual, they find the captain's actions
had another tragic consequence.
Take a look at this.
The autopilot is designed to be disengaged
in a number of ways. There's the routine
way of just switching it off normally,
but on this aircraft, if, if you apply 33
pounds of force, it will automatically
disengage. He disengaged the autopilot by
accident and I
think that's due to the task overload he's
going through that. There's so much going
on in his mind, there's so much happening
here that he doesn't catch the fact that
he's been pushing like mad and whoops,
the autopilot just disengaged.
Investigators now understand why China
Airlines Flight 676 fell from the sky.
It starts with bad teamwork in the
cockpit. Seems like we
don't have to do anything.
Yeah, we do. See the trum tank system
fault trim tank system in flight.
In aviation, it's definitely not a good
idea to do everything yourself. In a two
person cockpit, there should be a proper
division of labor. If there isn't that one
pilot that's doing everything becomes
saturated with tasks and doesn't have
adequate capacity to handle potential
challenges. God, that till'really strong.
The overworked captain is too high on
approach and when he attempts to descend
faster, he unintentionally disengages the
autopilot. Landing lights on.
Neither pilot comments on the autopilot
not in checklist complete when they
are still too high on approach. Gor go
around. Captain Kang calls
for a go around.
Not realizing the autopilot has shut off,
he assumes it will control the plane. It
doesn't.
The Airbus pitches so high it begins to
stall. By the
time the captain notices,
it's too late.
What a shame. It was totally preventable.
The aircraft was serviceable. And if the
crew had acted differently, then the end
result would have been different as well.
In the final report, investigators
recommend more training, including better
cockpit communication for all China
Airlines pilots. In response,
China Airlines begins recruiting pilots
with proven track records while improving
their pilot training program. After the
loss of this aircraft, crew resource
management training was required to
improve the communication and teamwork
skills between the pilots. Taiwan also
overhauls its Transportation Safety Board.
It's now got an international reputation
for their expertise in the technical
aspects of investigation, including
recorders, and also in publishing high
quality reports. So that's been a real
positive after the accident as well.
In all accents, you want to gain the most
out of it so you can prevent the next one.
So from this tragedy, we learned and we
adjusted the system and what we like to
have is that we don't ever see an accent
like this again.