Lawsuit accuses Boeing of failing to inform China Airlines about repair problems

Associated Press ^ | 13 August 2002 | William Foreman

[Asmodeus]

TAIPEI, Taiwan - The family of two crash victims has filed a lawsuit against Boeing Co. in a U.S. court, accusing the company of failing to tell a Taiwanese airline that the tail of one of its planes was improperly repaired before the jet crashed, a law firm said.

The lawsuit, filed Monday in Chicago, was the first since the China Airlines jetliner broke apart about 20 minutes into a flight from Taipei to Hong Kong on May 25. Investigators still don't know what caused the accident that killed all 225 people on board.

The plaintiffs are relatives of two victims: Taiwanese physician Liang Wen Wan, 42, and her daughter, Shih Peng Yu, 8, their Chicago-based attorney, Donald J. Nolan, said in a statement.

Both victims were permanent residents of the United States, and the lawsuit was filed in the Circuit Court of Cook County, said Nolan, who has been involved in several other aviation disaster cases and has recently met with investigators in Taiwan.

Much of the wreckage of Flight CI611 is still missing in the Taiwan Strait. But officials have said that pieces they have found indicate that the plane apparently first split apart in the tail section, and investigators are analyzing cracks in that area.

Nolan said that a stainless steel — not aluminum alloy — patch had been used to repair damage caused after the Boeing 747-200's tail hit the runway in 1980 — a common event called a "tail strike." The work was done shortly after China Airlines bought the brand new plane from Boeing about 23 years ago, his statement said.

When the repair was done, it was in line with Boeing's guidelines, Nolan said. However, the Chicago-based Boeing later changed its structural repair manual and warned that stainless steel patches should not be used to repair the aluminum alloy body of the plane, his statement said.

"Improper blending of metals in repairs can alter stress paths and overload surrounding areas," the firm's statement said.

"Once the use of stainless steel was prohibited for use, there is no evidence disclosed so far to indicate that Boeing advised airlines to inspect or correct prior repairs," Nolan said.

The lawyer warned that other aircraft could be flying with stainless steel patches similar to the ones used by China Airlines.

China Airlines would not immediately comment on whether Boeing properly warned the carrier or whether other planes in its fleet have stainless steel patches.

Boeing spokeswoman Kathleen Hanser told The Associated Press, "We just heard about it (the lawsuit), but since it's active litigation, we wouldn't comment anyway."

But Nicholas Ionides, regional managing editor for the trade publication Flight International, said he would be surprised if Boeing failed to properly notify China Airlines about the changes in repair procedures.

"Safety is paramount in the industry," the Singapore-based Ionides said. "They are usually very, very good about things like this."

The chief Taiwanese investigator, Kay Yong, said that the China Airlines jet only had one stainless steel patch, or "doubler." The square-shaped patch — with sides about 12 centimeters (five inches) long — was near a rear door used for loading cargo and emergency escapes.

Yong, managing director of the Aviation Safety Council, declined to speculate whether the patch might have ruptured, triggering the plane's break-up.

But investigators have said they're interested in a similar accident in 1985 involving a Japan Airlines Boeing 747-100SR that crashed into a Japanese mountain, killing 520 people.

Japanese investigators concluded that the plane broke apart because a rear bulkhead failed. The investigation report concluded that the bulkhead failed after Boeing engineers had improperly repaired damage to that part of the plane caused by tail strike years earlier.