China Airlines B744 at Taipei on Dec 14th 2018, touched down short of runway

Last Update: April 3, 2020 / 15:29:28 GMT/Zulu time

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Photo of China Airlines B-18717, Boeing 747-400 — China Airlines B-18717, Boeing 747-400 (Photo credit: Thomas Naas Photography / Flickr / License: CC by-nd)

Incident Facts

Date of incident
Dec 14, 2018

Classification
Incident

Airline
China Airlines

Flight number
CI-6844

Departure
Hong Kong, China

Destination
Taipei, Taiwan

Aircraft Registration
B-18717

Aircraft Type
Boeing 747-400

ICAO Type Designator
B744

A China Airlines Boeing 747-400 freighter, registration B-18717 performing flight CI-6844 (dep Dec 13th) from Hong Kong (China) to Taipei (Taiwan) with 2 crew, was on approach to Taipei's runway 05L at 00:19L (16:19Z) when the aircraft touched down short of the runway threshold, damaged a number of runway threshold lights and rolled out without further incident.

The aircraft was able to depart Taipei about 3:15 hours later.

Taiwan's Aviation Safety Council (ASC) dispatched an investigaton on site to perform runway service measurements and secure both flight data and cockpit voice recorders and opened an investigation.

On Apr 3rd 2020 Taiwan's Transportation Safety Board (TTSB, former ASC) released their final report in Chinese only and an executive summary in English (Editorial note: to serve the purpose of global prevention of the repeat of causes leading to an occurrence an additional timely release of all occurrence reports in the only world spanning aviation language English would be necessary, a Chinese only release - even with a brief executive summary in English - does not achieve this purpose as set by ICAO annex 13 and just forces many aviators to waste much more time and effort each in trying to understand the circumstances leading to the occurrence. Aviators operating internationally are required to read/speak English besides their local language, investigators need to be able to read/write/speak English to communicate with their counterparts all around the globe).

The executive summary states the probable causes of the serious incident were:

Findings related to risk

- The planning or the execution of “Junior Capt/FO Proficiency Monitoring Program” was not able to effectively manage the operations of the manual landing stays within the safe landing boundaries.

- The runway exposed in the risk of foreign object contamination inasmuch as the occurrence flight crew did not exactly report the situation they encountered to the tower and China Airline after landing.

Other findings

- The occurrence flight crew were qualified by Civil Aeronautics Administration with valid airman certification and medical examination, were also in compliance with the requirements of China Airlines, there is no abnormal finding from the training and check records related to this occurrence. There was no evidence indicating the performance of the flight crew were influenced by any preexisting medical conditions or alcohol effects during the occurrence flight.

- After the occurrence happened, the aircraft continued to perform
flight missions after changed the two of main tires. The cockpit voice
recorder did not contain information related to the occurrence.

- The occurrence flight did not subject to serious wind-shear or turbulence at radio altitude below 2,000 feet during landing.

- The radio altitude auto callout advisory could not be issued since the audio ability was being occupied by another GPWS aural alert voice, “Sink Rate”, at radio altitude below 100 feet.

- The weather condition and the aircraft weight and balance condition were within the landing limitation of the occurrence aircraft model during the occurrence occurred.

- The pilot-in-command possibly subjected to a few fatigue facts, such as short-term sleep deprivation, poor sleep quality and long continuous awaking time during the occurrence occurred, those could possibly lead symptoms of cognitive fatigue on awareness and reaction.

- There was no finding on the taxiway N1 and runway 05L after field check after the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport Co. Ltd. was reported the situation of the foreign objects on the paved way, it could be possibly due to the jet blast, which produced before take-off by the flight CI061 and blown the damaged runway end identifier lights into
the grass.

The TTSB reported the aircraft touched down 21 meters ahead of the runway threshold damaging three runway end identifier lights.