"The CVR recorded a noise that sounded like "ka ta, ka ta, ka ta," Yong said. The last noise was a sharp "thud" before the power went off, he said."
Taiwan coast guard inspect the China Airlines flight 611 cockpit recovered from the Taiwan Strait, Sunday, June 23, 2002, on the outlying Taiwan island of Penghu.
If this is true, I think it is a first for a 747.
Engine problems are highly unlikely, since a 747 can stay in the air with only one engine. However, pilot error after an engine failure may be a possibility, esp. if two engines went out on the same wing. (I don't know how well Chinese pilots are trained, but if its anything like their military pilots, I wouldn't rule out pilot error just yet.)
Comically wrong numbers here. 3,960 meters=12,992+ feet; 11,220 meters=36,811+ feet.
The figures in feet look like possible rates of climb for a 747; in meters, definitely not.
Human error and external forces did not play a role in the crash of China Airlines flight CI611, said officials from the Aviation Safety Council yesterday. "The most important finding from the `black boxes' is that we can rule out flight operation error as the cause of the accident," said ASC Director Yong Kay. "Now that we've ruled this factor out, it will be easier for us to find the focus for further investigation," Yong said, explaining that 70 percent of the aviation accidents were results of operation error.
Yong also said that investigators have also not found any evidence indicating that external forces played a role in the crash, since the wreckage recovered so far shows no signs of fire or an explosion.
On May 25, the Hong Kong-bound Boeing 747-200 passenger jet broke up in midair and crashed into the Taiwan Strait, killing all 225 passengers and crew on board. The two so-called "black boxes" -- the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder -- of the airliner were retrieved last week from waters near Penghu. The ASC released its preliminary findings from the flight data recorder yesterday. The findings from the cockpit voice recorder were released on Sunday.
Yong said that before the flight data recorder lost power at 3:27:58pm, its data revealed "slight abnormal changes" in its vertical acceleration, ascending rate and engine pressure ratio before the plane crashed into sea. Yong said that recorder's data revealed that the vertical acceleration experienced a 0.25G (gravity) change, and the plane had a abnormal increase in its ascending rate, going up from 3,960m to 11,220m per minute. He said that the engine pressure ratio of the aircraft's engine number four reduced from 1.52 to 1.49.
Yong, however, stressed that these variations were acceptable within cockpit operations and the data gathered from the two recorders showed that the pilots did not react to such changes. "These changes [in the plane's system] are within the airliner's tolerance. If it had landed in Hong Kong, these changes would be totally acceptable," he said.
Moreover, cross examination of the data showed that the flight data recorder did not indicate any unusual system changes at the times when cockpit voice recorder picked up strange noises.
Minutes before the crash, the cockpit voice recorder picked up three different series of unusual sounds which have bewildered the investigators.
Since there was no major abnormal data shown in the flight data recorder, Yong told reporters that the most important thing would be to run the cockpit voice recorder through sound spectrum analysis. "It [sound spectrum analysis] might give us a clearer direction in our further investigation," he said.