Death crash pilots 'drank alcohol'

TOKYO - Both the captain and the co-pilot of the China Airlines plane that crashed last week in Japan appear to have drunk alcohol during or shortly before the flight, according to a report in a Japanese newspaper yesterday, writes Terry McCarthy. The report further fuels speculation that the crash, which killed 264 of the 271 people on board, was caused by pilot error.

The daily Mainichi newspaper said that investigators had found small amounts of alcohol in the bodies of the captain, Wang Lo Chi, 42, and the co-pilot, Chuang Meng Jung, 26. Most big airlines forbid their flight crew from consuming any alcohol before or during a flight. Investigators from Japan's Ministry of Transport have already established that the co-pilot, not the captain, was at the controls.

The Airbus A300-600R, flying from Taiwan to Nagoya in central Japan last Tuesday, was on its final approach when the pilot, with 8,435 hours of flying experience, told the air traffic control tower that the plane was 'going around' to make a second attempt at landing. It seems that the plane was too high and risked overshooting the runway.

At that stage, according to the cockpit voice recording retrieved from the 'black box', the co-pilot, with 1,627 hours of flying time, was becoming panicky because he seemed unable to work the controls properly.