#chinaairlines

On 19th February 1985, China Airlines Flight 006 was on their way to Los Angeles from Taiwan. 10 hours into the journey the crew noticed sudden loss of thrust in the Boeing 747’s 4th engine. According to Why Planes Crash Aviation Analyst John Cox, ‘The number one procedure if you lose an engine, you have to come down.’ The crew must descend to 30000 ft where the air is denser to restart the engine. Instead the captain asks the flight engineer to restart engine number 4 while still at 41000 ft. The restart attempt failed and the continued loss of thrust began to slow the airplane down.

China Airlines Flight 006. Photo: collected.

The airplane was rolling to the right, towards engine 4. According to Why Planes Crash Aviation Analyst John Cox, ‘If you have a failure of one engine, you now have asymmetrical or unbalanced power and the airplane will tilt towards the failed engine because there is more power being produced on the other wing.’ The crew was preoccupied restarting the engine and failed to disengage the autopilot and manually straighten out the plane. When they finally disengaged it the aircraft was in a dangerous position having rolled much more than the crew realized. The Boeing 747 began falling towards the ocean. In just thirty seconds the plane had fallen more than 10000 ft. ‘They were over speed a lot, this is a condition that you can physically pull an airplane apart’, John Cox adds. 

At the back of the airplane the tips of a horizontal stabilizer separate from the tail. The aircraft had fallen another 20000 ft in less than two minutes and there was only 11000 ft between the airplane and the ocean. The crew held up hard at the control panel and using the horizon tried to level out the airplane but they were still losing altitude.

China Airlines Flight 006 after landing in San Francisco. Photo: Collected.

Finally after falling for more than 30000 ft in less than two and a half minutes the nose of the aircraft began to pitch up and the plane finally levelled at 9500 ft. 

Aviation Expert Greg Feith says, ‘The captain used very artful flying to recover the aircraft from the bad situation unfortunately it was that same pilot who put the airplane into that bad situation.’ 

The crew realized because of the drag from landing gear they won’t have enough fuel to make it to Los Angeles instead they will try to make it to San Francisco. Finally at lower altitude and denser air the crew was able to restart the 4th engine. 

The plane touches down on the runway and the landing gear holds the massive weight of a Boeing 747. Due to the excessive G-forces the aircraft was significantly damaged. According to Why Planes Crash Aviation Analyst John Cox, ‘They were very fortunate that the aircraft was so well built, so well designed that even during this extreme maneuver the airplane stayed together.’ Aviation Expert Greg Feith, ‘The captain is fortunate that he had 30000+ ft to recover this high speed dive because if it happened in 20000 ft he may not have enough altitude.’ If the crew hadn’t recovered Flight 006 from it’s nose dive given their rate of descend they would have collided with the ocean in thirty seconds. 

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigation determined that the captain's decision making ability could have been impaired by the effects of monotony, boredom and fatigue. Investigators believe despite the malfunction of engine 4 the cause of the accident was the pilot's preoccupation with the engine problem, his failure to monitor flight instruments and his over reliance on the autopilot.