| Wednesday, 29 May, 2002, 10:48 GMT
11:48 UK
Taiwan crash's 'black boxes' located
Little wreckage has been recovered so far
Taiwanese rescue teams have pinpointed the location of the "black
boxes" of a China Airlines airplane which crashed into the sea on
Saturday with 225 people on board, officials said.
The cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder are thought to be in waters off Taiwan's Penghu island, said Transport Minister Lin Ling-san.
"After searches throughout the morning, we are certain about the site of the black boxes," he said. He said a large piece of wreckage had also been located at the site. Rescue workers have so far recovered little wreckage and still have no idea what caused the airplane to break apart in mid-air. The Boeing 747-200 crashed into the Taiwan Strait on Saturday about 20 minutes after taking off from Taipei on a flight to Hong Kong. No survivors have been found and so far about 90 bodies have been recovered. Taiwan said earlier on Wednesday that it planned to ask the US and China for satellite and radar data which could help locate wreckage and give a better indication of how the debris fell. Specialist help The lack of answers prompted angry relatives to complain about China Airlines' response to the disaster, and there have been calls from Taiwanese politicians for the state-controlled airline to be privatised.
US air safety experts are helping in the investigation. Taiwanese officials said the US team was involved because of its experience with two other crashes which appear to have similarities with the China Airlines crash, and which also needed deep-sea salvage skills. The two crashes were a mid-air explosion of a TWA Boeing jet in 1996 off the New York coast, and a SwissAir MD11 which crashed into the sea off Canada after leaving New York in 1998.
Investigators later attributed the TWA crash to an explosion in the plane's fuel tank. Aviation specialists have put forward several theories about the causes of the China Airlines crash - an internal explosion, sudden cabin depressurisation, a mid-air collision, or a military accident. Officials have ruled out bad weather or an air traffic control mistake as causes of the crash. Saturday's accident was China Airlines' fourth major crash in less than 10 years. The company said the plane was built in 1979 and was the last of its kind in the airline's fleet. The crash of China Airlines flight 611 follows two major accidents in the region involving mainland Chinese airlines in the last six weeks.
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Looking for some 747
Classic Input
Most probably a
TWA800 replay however, |
b. Taiwan is a US supported and sponsored ally
c. Al Qaeda want to disrupt international commerce - which impacts greatly, although indirectly, upon the US economy.
d. They had about a 50% chance of getting it onto a US built hull and scoring some US citizens to boot.
e. They cause international concern about airline security (average pax doesn't stop to think about the finer detail - just the fact that an airliner was downed)
f. It's an easy target, utilising minimal resources and defeats post 911 measures. It's eminently repeatable.
g. The new style of terrorism is NOT to claim responsibility (and that continuing unknown just adds to the terror factors). After a while it becomes SOP for all air-crashes to be assumed prima facie to be Al Qaeda accomplishments - nice force multiplier effect.
h. It exploits known deficiencies in the World's airfreight system. That's a known strategy of Al Qaeda's.
The true hallmark of terrorism is in its indifference to the who or what of its victims. They just set out to show that they can exercise their will with impunity and seek to convert more mindless Muslims to the justice of their cause via the kudos of success and showing up the hapless nature of authorities forced to take very costly (cripplingly so?) wide-sweeping measures to counter them. At that point they just switch to a new strategy (eg Doubt that we will see another shoe-bomber; next one will be toting his explosives internally with a gastric acid activated fusing).
Even if it was only diversionary, it would have made sense in a terrorist's mind. Not saying that this is what might have happened - but you did ask the question. Smarter people than I could probably come up with many more "reasons why".[/color]
However, despite my post above, still think that it was a TWA800 replay however. Arcing in a fuel tank probe is all that's required to give you a TWA800 - if there's no tank inerting (N2) and the tanks are full of fuel fumes (courtesy of high ambient temperatures and underlying airconditioning packs heat-soaking the Centre Wing Tanks up to the fuel's flash-point).
