China Airlines 611, 25 May 2002
All 225 aboard died when a 747-200 broke up in the climb. A 1980 tailstrike repair had left damage uncovered, and it cracked over 22 years of cycles.
On 25 May 2002, China Airlines Flight 611 broke apart in the climb out of Taipei. All 225 people aboard died — 206 passengers and 19 crew.
The aircraft was B-18255, a Boeing 747-209B.
A repair from 1980
On 7 February 1980, this aircraft scraped its tail on landing at Hong Kong’s Kai Tak — a tailstrike, damaging the lower rear fuselage skin.
Boeing’s structural repair manual gave two acceptable options: replace the whole damaged section, or fit a doubler — a reinforcing plate — large enough to cover all the damage and be fastened into sound metal beyond it.
China Airlines technicians fitted a doubler that was too small. Scratches from the tailstrike extended beyond the rows of fasteners, outside the area the plate reinforced.
Twenty-two years
Those exposed scratches were stress raisers in a structure that is loaded and unloaded once per flight. As the pressurisation page sets out, a fuselage is a pressure vessel, and cycles rather than hours drive fatigue.
Cracks grew from the scratches over 22 years and thousands of pressurisation cycles until, in the climb, the fuselage ruptured and the aircraft broke up.
The parallel with JAL 123
This is the second time a badly executed repair destroyed a 747 many years later, and the resemblance to Japan Air Lines 123 is close enough to be uncomfortable:
| JAL 123 (1985) | China Airlines 611 (2002) | |
|---|---|---|
| Original damage | Tailstrike, 1978 | Tailstrike, 1980 |
| Repair error | Two splice plates instead of one continuous | Doubler too small to cover the damage |
| Time to failure | 7 years, 12,318 cycles | 22 years |
| Deaths | 520 | 225 |
In both cases the aircraft was airworthy by every inspection it passed. The defect was inside a repair that everyone assumed had been done correctly, and no routine check was looking for it.
That is the lesson both accidents force: a repair is not a one-off event but a permanent change to the structure, and the record of it has to be as durable as the aircraft. Inspection regimes around repaired structure were tightened significantly as a result.
Related
More in Accidents
Boeing 747 accidents
The major Boeing 747 accidents, what caused them, and the changes to aviation that followed — from Tenerife to the end of production.
Tenerife, 27 March 1977
Two Boeing 747s collided in fog at Tenerife, killing 583 people. It remains the deadliest accident in aviation history, and it changed how crews talk.
Japan Air Lines 123, 12 August 1985
A faulty repair failed seven years later, destroying the tail and all four hydraulic systems. 520 died; four survived. The deadliest single-aircraft crash.
Pan Am 103, Lockerbie, 21 December 1988
A bomb in the forward hold destroyed a 747 over Lockerbie, killing 259 on board and 11 on the ground, and reshaped aviation security.
TWA 800, 17 July 1996
The centre fuel tank of a 747 exploded shortly after takeoff from New York, killing 230. It led to fuel tank inerting being mandated worldwide.
El Al 1862, Amsterdam, 4 October 1992
Two engines tore from the wing of a 747 freighter, which crashed into an Amsterdam apartment block. Fatigued pylon fuse pins were the cause.