http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8...icle=1&catnum=2"NAHA, Japan (AP) - Passengers used emergency slides to evacuate a China Airlines jet just minutes before the plane burst into a fireball Monday on the tarmac. All 165 people aboard escaped unhurt, including the pilot, who jumped from the cockpit at the last second."bt

Is China Airlines the one with one of the lower safety records?RhettAMD 3700+ (@2585 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2gb Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8 (1T), WD 150 gig 10000rpm Raptor, WD 250gig 7200rpm SATA2, Seagate 120gb 5400 rpm external HD, CoolerMaster Praetorian

>Is China Airlines the one with one of the lower safety>records?>>Rhett>>AMD 3700+ (@2585 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS>A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2gb Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8 (1T), WD 150>gig 10000rpm Raptor, WD 250gig 7200rpm SATA2, Seagate 120gb>5400 rpm external HD, CoolerMaster PraetorianYep, that's the one but as best as I recall offhand it has usually been pilot error rather than mechanical failures, so at this very early stage and given the nature of the incident, my hunch would be that it was equipment failure with possably no fault on the part of the airline.Best and Warm RegardsAdrian Wainer

Fire resulting from fuel leak on left engine plus 4 main gear tires = "four explosions". Video indicates pretty clearly that the "explosions" were the tires blowing out. It'll be interesting to hear how the fuel leak occured. Glad everyone got out okay.

great news is that no one was killed.planes and other personal property are never more important than lives.the cause will be interesting ... human error as caused by poor maintenance practice, mechanical failure, something in design, other?--

Glad the crew did not hesitate to initiate evac. According to the Japan Air Ministry official in the video, once the leak was reported the plan was evacuated within 90 seconds. As you can see in the video, shortly thereafter the large explosion occurred.bt

This is an accident involving a 737 at Manchester England, amongst the many differences between the China Airlines accident and the Manchester tragedy would be the many changes in design and equipments the 737 has gone through since the Manchester fire, but I thought it would be usefull never the less to see to put the accident report for the Manchester tragedy in to this thread, to see if there might be any similarities between the two events.http://www.aaib.gov.uk/sites/aaib/cms_reso..._pdf_502609.pdfBest and Warm RegardsAdrian Wainer

The plane lands 'normally' with possible blown tires.Taxi's to the stand - then ground crew report a fuel leak - and the fuel catches fire.Goes to show my old saying is correct - "The safest seat on an airplane in next to an exit"Since the majority of evacuation tests fail the 2 minute mark - these folks were motivated to get off this plane.Blown tires on landing or takeoff almost always cause damage to the underside of the wings. Punctures of the wing and fuel tanks are not uncommon.That was the basic cause of the Concorde crash.Again, lucky and motivated people.

And you have to ask, what caused the tires to blow out in the first place? Was it debris on the runway, like the Concorde crash? Was debris kicked up into the fuselage or wing? You do not necessarily have to sit next to an exit to be in a "safer" seat. Only a handfull of passengers can sit there, but one should be aware of where those exits are and how many rows you are from them. Do whatever you have to do to remember the number of rows you have to go before you get to the exit. In a real emergency there will not be enough time to sit back and look for exits.John M

>what caused the tires to blow out in the first place?i would say the cause of the tires blow as the heat caused by the fire ...--

Sad to see but it is believed that the China Airlines didn't do a scheduled check on the bolt out of one of the slats and that punctured the fuel line. Boeing issued a maintanence circular in 2005 or 2006 about this problem and the hazards it can pose.

http://atwonline.com/news/story.html?storyID=9992

The loose bolt is just another little problem that seems to be adding to continuing list of defects that are showing up in the venerable Boeing 737 series.There have been problems with the engine housings being out of round and causing turbine blade failure. I think that was a cause of the engine failure in Manchester, England incident. The most deadly failure I can recall is the rudder reversal occurrences that caused at least two fatal air crashes. I was living in Colorado Springs at the time the United 737 crash occurred and I remember it was an extremely windy day, cross winds gusted to 50 miles an hour at KCOS. After years of investigation, it turned out that the hydraulic control unit that operated the rudder was susceptible to thermal shock and one side of the dual control unit would seize when going from extreme cold to warmer temperatures, causing the rudder to go full hard over when the pilot applied sudden rudder inputs, which would be the case in a severe crosswind landing.Pilots could recover from this occurrence at higher speeds and altitudes (that's how the investigators figured out the problem when it happened to two other airliners that the pilots were able to recover from the roll). But at approach speeds and altitudes, they could get into what is called a 'crossover stall' whereas one wing would stall before the other at low speeds when a sudden yaw occurred, especially dangerous during crosswind landings. When the rudder slammed over on the United flight, the aircraft violently rolled over when the right wing stalled and the pilots had no chance to recover from the resulting roll.As best as I can remember, I think Boeing had to issue new higher landing speeds to all 737 pilots while the cause was being sorted out.Kim

kim:the number of ADs issued for aircraft of all makes is rather amazing. i worked for in seattle alaska airlines records in the late 1980s. i filed and retrieved information on the MD80 fleet. i remember, as i was 'new' to this type of work at the time, thinking, "all these aircraft are broken."take a look yourself on ADs issued for modern 'large' jet transport aircraft -http://www.airweb.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_G...me?OpenFrameSetnote all the names in the last 60 days - airbus, boeing, Bombardier, EMBRAER, General Electric, MD, Pratt & Whitney, etc.--

Scobie,Yeah, I bet if the average airline passenger could read all the AD's, they probably wouldn't even get on the plane!However, this particular 737 fault was quite frightening since not only was it random, but unfortunately deadly. Investigators couldn't pinpoint the problem for YEARS, all the while allowing 737's to keep flying. Boeing and the Airline Pilots Association placed the blame at on other during this whole investigation.If you want to read about the United and USAir 737 crashes concerning this problem, you should find the book by Bill Adair called: The Mystery of Flight 427. It's quite interesting.Kim