China Airlines Flight 611 - Flight and Disaster

Flight and Disaster

The flight on Saturday, 25 May 2002 took off at 14:50 local time and was expected to arrive at Hong Kong at 16:28. The flight crew consisted of Captain Ching-Fong Yi (simplified Chinese: 易清丰; traditional Chinese: 易清豐; pinyin: Yì Qīngfēng), First Officer Yea Shyong Shieh (simplified Chinese: 谢亚雄; traditional Chinese: 謝亞雄; pinyin: Xiè Yàxióng), and Flight Engineer Sen Kuo Chao (simplified Chinese: 赵盛国; traditional Chinese: 趙盛國; pinyin: Zhào Shèngguó). The names of the pilot and first officer, respectively, are alternatively romanized as "Yi Ching-Fung" and "Hsieh Ya-Shiung".

About 25 minutes after takeoff, the aircraft disappeared from radar screens, suggesting it had experienced an in-flight breakup at FL350 (approximately 35,000 feet or 7 miles) near the Penghu Islands in the Taiwan Strait (co-ordinates 23.98°N, 119.67°E).

The crash occurred at a time between 15:37 and 15:40; Chang Chia-juch (張家祝, pinyin: Zhāng Jiāzhù), the Taiwanese Vice Minister of Transportation and Communications, said that two Cathay Pacific aircraft in the area received B-18255's emergency location-indicator signals. All 19 crew members and all 206 passengers died.