China Airlines Flight 140

China Airlines Flight 140 was a regularly scheduled international passenger flight from Chiang Kai-shek International Airport in Taipei, Taiwan, to Nagoya Airport in Nagoya, Japan.

On 26 April 1994, the Airbus A300 serving the route was completing a routine flight and approach when, on approach to landing at Nagoya Airport, the takeoff/go-around setting (TO/GA) was inadvertently triggered. The pilots attempted to pitch the aircraft down while the autopilot, which was not disabled, was pitching the aircraft up. The aircraft ultimately stalled and crashed into the ground, killing 264 of the 271 people on board. The event remains the deadliest accident in the history of China Airlines, the second deadliest air crash in Japanese history after Japan Air Lines Flight 123, and the third deadliest air crash involving the Airbus A300.

Accident

The flight took off from Chiang Kai-shek International Airport at 16:53 Taiwan Standard Time bound for Nagoya Airport. At the controls were Captain Wang Lo-chi, age 42, and First Officer Chuang Meng-jung, age 26. The en route flight was uneventful; the descent started at 19:47, and the aircraft passed the outer marker at 20:12. Just 3 nmi from the runway threshold at 1000 ft above ground level (AGL), the first officer (co-pilot) inadvertently selected the takeoff/go-around setting (also known as a TO/GA), which tells the autopilot to increase the throttles to take off/go-around power.

The crew attempted to correct the situation, manually reducing the throttles and pushing the yoke forward. However, they did not disconnect the autopilot, which was still acting on the inadvertent go-around command it had been given, so it increased its own efforts to overcome the action of the pilot. The autopilot followed its procedures and moved the horizontal stabilizer to its full nose-up position. The pilots, realizing the landing must be aborted and not realizing that the TO/GA was still engaged, then knowingly executed a manual go-around, pulling back on the yoke and adding to the nose-up attitude that the autopilot was already trying to execute. The aircraft levelled off for about 15 seconds and continued descending until about 500 ft where there were two bursts of thrust applied in quick succession and the aircraft was nose up in a steep climb. The resulting extreme nose-up attitude, combined with decreasing relative airspeed due to insufficient thrust, resulted in an aerodynamic stall. Airspeed dropped quickly, the aircraft stalled, and it struck the ground at 20:15:45. 31-year-old Noriyasu Shirai, a survivor, said that a flight attendant announced that the aircraft would crash after it stalled. Sylvanie Detonio, the only survivor who could be interviewed on 27 April, said that passengers received no warning prior to the crash.

Of the 271 people on board (15 crew and 256 passengers), seven passengers survived. All of the survivors were seated in rows 7 through 15. On 27 April 1994, officials said there were 10 survivors (including a three-year-old) and that a Filipino, two Taiwanese, and seven Japanese survived. By 6 May, only seven remained alive, including three children.