Asia Times: China


	May 29, 2002	atimes.com

China

Lawmakers urge China Airlines to change name

TAIPEI - Three legislators of Taiwan's ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) say they will urge China Airlines (CAL), the island's largest carrier, to change its name after the latest fatal crash of one of its planes.

A CAL Boeing 747-200, with 206 passengers and 19 crew members aboard, crashed into the Taiwan Strait on Saturday en route to Hong Kong. Flight CI 611 took off from Chiang Kai-shek International Airport, some 40 kilometers south of Taipei, at 3:08pm and disappeared from radar screens less than half an hour later. No survivors have been found.

The three DPP lawmakers, Trong Chai, Lin Chin-hsing and Lee Jhen-nan, said in a joint news release that they will present a proposal asking the China Airlines Development Foundation, the carrier's largest shareholder, to demand that CAL change its name. The legislators said a name change might be able to help CAL rid itself of bad luck and improve its image in the highly competitive global civil-aviation market.

The lawmakers suggested that CAL use "Formosa", which means "beautiful" in Portuguese and is an alternative name for the island of Taiwan, as its new title.

"A new name could signify the carrier's Taiwan origin and might also bring it good fortune," the lawmakers said in the statement.

The trio said China Airlines' present title has often misled foreign passengers into thinking it is a mainland China-owned airline.

Saturday's crash was CAL's sixth fatal flight mishap in about 12 years. The previous five accidents resulted in the deaths of 474 passengers and crew members. "If the latest crash's casualties are included, the combined death toll of CAL-related flight mishaps has already exceeded 700," the legislators said in their statement.

CAL's last fatal crash was in 1999 when a jetliner flipped and burst into flames during a crash landing in Hong Kong, killing three people.

Legislator Lee Jhen-nan said a US aviation travel association once listed CAL as one of 29 substandard carriers among 260 airlines it studied. After a series of crashes in the 1990s, CAL became known for one of the world's worst airline safety records, with 12 deadly accidents since 1969. In recent years, the airline has been aggressively retraining pilots and revamping its safety procedures.

Meanwhile, Taiwanese aviation officials said on Tuesday that signals thought to be from the black boxes of the plane that crashed on Saturday turned out to be false, dealing a fresh blow to efforts to discover the cause of the disaster.

Aviation experts have put forward several theories: an internal explosion, sudden cabin depressurization, a midair collision, or a military accident. Farmers near the flight path found debris from the aircraft in their fields - bits of foam padding, baggage check-in stubs and scraps of in-flight magazines. The bodies of many of the victims were found with open eyes, broken bones and dislocated jaws, with no signs of burns, witnesses and officials said.

Search teams recovered only two bodies on Monday, bringing to 82 the number found. Many more are believed to have sunk strapped to their seats.

Beijing's official Xinhua news agency said Chinese rescue ships had salvaged six pieces of wreckage in the Taiwan Strait by Monday evening. Chinese fishermen passed a body they found to Taiwanese authorities, the island's coast guard chief said.

Airline officials said most of the passengers were Taiwanese, nine were from mainland China, five were from Hong Kong and Macau, two were Singaporean and one was Swiss. A group of relatives of mainland victims arrived late on Monday and more were to fly to Taiwan on Tuesday.

The busy Taiwan-Hong Kong air corridor is known as the "Golden Route" because of its high profitability. More than 30 passenger jets fly the route each day.

In the wake of Saturday's fatal accident, CAL has 55 aircraft: 13 Boeing 747-400 passenger planes and 11 747-400 cargo planes of this series, five Airbus A340-300 passenger planes, 12 A300-600R passenger planes, nine Boeing B737-800 passenger planes, four Boeing 747-200 cargo planes, and one MD-11 passenger plane. The plane that crashed was a 747-200, and Taiwan's Civil Aeronautics Administration grounded the airline's other four 747-200s, all cargo aircraft, for checks.

Under a policy to simplify aircraft types of its fleet, CAL has decided to retire its only MD-11 and its 12 A300-600Rs. The 22-year-old Boeing 747-200 that crashed on Saturday was also on the CAL list of aircraft to be retired. It was originally scheduled for retirement next month. A Thai carrier reportedly had struck a deal with CAL to purchase the aging jetliner. CAL staff said the plane was completely overhauled last year.

The crash follows two other Asian air disasters, both involving carriers from mainland China. Almost 130 people were killed when an Air China Boeing 767-200 crashed into a South Korean mountain last month. All 112 passengers and crew were killed on May 7 when a China Northern MD-82 crashed into the sea off northeast China.

(Asia Times Online/CNA)