Aircraft
The aircraft involved was an Airbus A300B4-622R, registration B-1816, manufacturer serial number 580. It was built by Airbus Industrie on 29 January 1991 and delivered to China Airlines on 2 February 1991. The aircraft had logged 8,572 hours and 12 minutes of airframe time and 3,910 takeoff and landing cycles. It was powered by two Pratt & Whitney PW4158 engines.
Accident Sequence
Flight 140 took off from Chiang Kai-shek International Airport (Taipei, Taiwan) at 16:53 Taiwan Standard Time, bound for Nagoya Airport in Japan. The flight was routine until descent began at 19:47. The aircraft passed the outer marker at 20:12. At approximately 3 nautical miles from the runway threshold, at an altitude of 1,000 feet above ground level, the first officer inadvertently selected the takeoff/go-around (TO/GA) mode, commanding the autopilot to apply go-around thrust.
The crew responded by manually reducing the throttles and pushing the control yoke forward, but they did not disconnect the autopilot. The autopilot continued to execute the go-around command, moving the horizontal stabilizer to full nose-up position. The pilots then initiated a manual go-around, pulling back on the yoke, which added to the nose-up attitude. The aircraft leveled off for about 15 seconds, then descended to about 500 feet, where two bursts of thrust occurred. The aircraft entered a steep climb, resulting in an aerodynamic stall. Airspeed dropped rapidly, and the aircraft struck the ground at 20:15:45.
Survivor Noriyasu Shirai, aged 31, reported that a flight attendant announced the aircraft would crash after it stalled. Another survivor, Sylvanie Detonio, stated that passengers received no warning before the crash.
Passengers and Survivors
The flight carried 271 people: 15 crew and 256 passengers. Among the passengers were 153 Japanese citizens, 18 Filipino citizens, and the remainder were Taiwanese. Seven passengers survived the crash, all seated in rows 7 through 15. Initially, officials reported 10 survivors, including a three-year-old child, but by 6 May, only seven remained alive, including three children.
Investigation
The crash was primarily attributed to crew error for their failure to correct the controls and the airspeed. The investigation noted that the crew did not disconnect the autopilot after the inadvertent TO/GA engagement, leading to the stall and subsequent impact.