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Simon Parry

Five years after the tragic end to a China Airlines flight, official findings are not available

The findings of a public inquiry into the China Airlines crash at Chek Lap Kok airport in 1999 have still not been released, four months after the inquiry's own deadline for  the report to see the light of day.

The delay in the release of the Board of Review report, convened under the Hong Kong Civil Aviation (Investigation of Accidents) Regulations, means that four years and 10 months after the MD-11 crashed on landing, killing three people and injuring more than 200, there has been no public report into the incident.

Officials were unable to explain the delay  last week. A spokeswoman for Hong Kong's Civil Aviation Department would only say: 'The Board of Review report is not available yet'.

She declined to say if the department was aware of any reason for the delay.

China Airlines flight CI642 was due to stop over in Hong Kong on its flight from Bangkok to Taipei when it flipped over on the runway and burst into flames on landing.

At the time, the eye of a typhoon was  50km northeast of Hong Kong.

A public inquiry into the crash was ordered after a draft report by the Civil Aviation Department was challenged by China Airlines.

The draft report - which was never made public because of the  challenge -  blamed Italian pilot Gerardo Lettich  for the accident, saying he failed to control the rate of descent of the aircraft in the final seconds.

China Airlines, backed by the Hong Kong Airline Pilots Association, argued that the draft report was flawed  because it had failed to take into account the weather conditions, and a possible wind shear which it said contributed to the accident.

The airline argued that Mr Lettich, now retired, had been unfairly made a scapegoat for the crash.

A two-week Board of Review hearing was convened in November to hear the arguments from both sides.

A pilot testifying for China Airlines said the airline had performed a simulation which went far enough to show that the only time the plane landed safely was when the autopilot was switched on. However, the only way the autopilot landed the plane was with a manoeuvre no pilot would undertake because it would risk damage to the tail section, he said.

At the end of the hearing, the three-man panel headed by magistrate Ernest Lin Kam-hung  said it expected to release its findings by the end of February.

An official at China Airlines said: 'We're still waiting like everyone else. We were expecting the report by the beginning of March at the latest but no one seems to know where it's got to. It's a mystery to us.'

A Hong Kong-based industry source said: 'We believe the report will go to the  Chief Executive's Office first as he is the one who convened the Board of Review, but as far as anyone knows it's still being worked on by the panel.

'People were already unhappy last year that it had taken so long for the original draft report to be prepared. The fact that it's now almost five years since the accident and there is still no report in the public domain will not help matters.'

A spokeswoman for the Chief Executive's Office said it had not yet received the Board of Review report.



Air crash report still grounded