China Airlines Flight 140

China Airlines Flight 140

A China Airlines Airbus A300 similar to the aircraft involved in the accident.
Accident summary
Date	26 April 1994
Summary	Stall caused by pilot error
Site	Nagoya, Japan 35°14′43″N 136°55′56″E / 35.2453°N 136.9323°E / 35.2453; 136.9323Coordinates: 35°14′43″N 136°55′56″E / 35.2453°N 136.9323°E / 35.2453; 136.9323
Passengers	256
Crew	15
Fatalities	264
Injuries (non-fatal)	7
Survivors	7
Aircraft type	Airbus A300B4-622R
Operator	China Airlines
Registration	B-1816
Flight origin	Chiang Kai-Shek Int'l Airport (Now Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport)
Destination	Nagoya Airport

China Airlines Flight 140 was a regularly scheduled passenger flight from Chiang Kai-shek International Airport (Now Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport) serving Taipei, Taiwan, to Nagoya Airport in Nagoya, Japan. On 26 April 1994, the Airbus A300B4-622R was completing a routine flight and approach, when, just before landing at Nagoya Airport, the First Officer inadvertently pressed the Takeoff/Go-around button (also known as a TO/GA) which raises the throttle position to the same as take offs and go-arounds.

Pilot Wang Lo-chi (Chinese: 王樂琦; pinyin: Wáng Lèqí) and copilot Chuang Meng-jung (莊孟容; Zhuāng Mèngróng) attempted to correct the situation by manually reducing the throttles and pushing the yoke downwards. The autopilot then acted against these inputs (as it is programmed to do when the TO/GA button is activated), causing the nose to pitch up sharply. This nose-high attitude, combined with decreasing airspeed due to insufficient thrust, resulted in an aerodynamic stall of the aircraft. With insufficient altitude to recover from this condition, the subsequent crash killed 264 (15 crew and 249 passengers) of the 271 (15 crew and 256 passengers) people aboard. All passengers who survived the accident were seated in rows 7 through 15.

The crash, which destroyed the aircraft (delivered less than 3 years earlier in 1991), was attributed to crew error for their failure to correct the controls as well as the airspeed.

To date, the accident remains the deadliest accident in the history of China Airlines, and the second-deadliest aviation accident on Japanese soil, behind Japan Airlines Flight 123. It is also the third-deadliest aviation accident or incident involving an Airbus A300, after Iran Air Flight 655 and later American Airlines Flight 587.