Rachel Liu

China Airlines Flight 676

A China Airlines Airbus A300-600 similar to B-1814 at Ngurah Rai International Airport.
Accident summary
Date	16 February 1998
Summary	Crash on approach due to bad weather and pilot error
Site	Taoyuan County (now Taoyuan City), Taiwan
Passengers	182
Crew	14
Fatalities	203 (including 7 on the ground)
Survivors	0
Aircraft type	Airbus A300B4-622R
Operator	China Airlines
Registration	B-1814
Flight origin	Ngurah Rai Int'l Airport Bali, Indonesia
Destination	Chiang Kai-Shek Int'l Airport Taoyuan, Taiwan

External images

Photos of B-1814 at Airliners.net

Picture of the crash

China Airlines Flight 676 (CAL676, CI676) was a scheduled international passenger flight that crashed into a road and residential area in Tayuan, Taoyuan County (now Taoyuan City), near Chiang Kai-shek International Airport (present-day Taoyuan International Airport), Taiwan on the night of Monday, 16 February 1998.

The Airbus A300 jet liner was en route from Ngurah Rai Airport in Bali, Indonesia to Taipei, Taiwan. The weather was inclement with rain and fog when the aircraft approached Chiang Kai-shek International Airport, so the pilot executed a missed approach. After the jet was cleared to land at runway 05L, the autopilot was disengaged, and the pilots then attempted a manual go-around. The jet slowed down, pitched up by 40 degrees, rose 1,000 feet (300 m), stalled, and crashed into a residential neighborhood, bursting into flames at local time 4:20 PM. All 196 people on board were killed (including the president of Taiwan's central bank, Sheu Yuan-dong, his wife, Huang Mian-mei, and three central bank officials), along with seven people on the ground. Hsu Lu, the manager of the Voice of Taipei radio station, said that one boy was pulled alive from the wreckage and later died.

The cockpit voice recording was leaked on the Internet, but has been removed as it is a property of the Taiwanese government.

With 203 fatalities, this was the deadliest air disaster of 1998 until Swissair Flight 111 crashed off the eastern coast of Canada on 2 September, killing 229 people. It remains the deadliest aviation accident on Taiwanese soil and the fifth-deadliest involving an Airbus A300. China Airlines had twelve A300s in its fleet at the time of the accident. It is also the second deadliest accident overall in Taiwan's history, behind China Airlines Flight 611, a Boeing 747-209B which crashed in the Taiwan Strait with 225 fatalities.

The aircraft involved in the accident was an Airbus A300B4-622R, registration B-1814. It was delivered to China Airlines on 14 December 1990 and was powered by 2x Pratt and Whitney PW4156 engines. The aircraft was 7.3 years old at the time of the accident and had completed 20,193 flight hours. Captain Kang Long-Lin who was 49 years old, joined China Airlines in 1990, and had 7,210 hours total flight time. First Officer Jiang Der-Sheng who was 44 years old, joined China Airlines in 1996, and had 3,530 hours total flight time. Both pilots were formerly with the Republic of China Air Force.